


Angus McDonald and the Case of the Soul Stealer

by Buffintruder



Series: Angus McDonald, Boy Detective [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Gen, Mystery, Team as Family, a healthy dose of dramatic irony, a small amount of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-07-12 09:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 48,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15991994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: As an amateur detective, Angus McDonald has solved a number of mysteries, mostly of the missing keys and stolen toys variety. Currently, his most interesting cases are on why Taako’s strange new boyfriend is keeping secrets and what Taako’s unexpected reaction to some names in an old cookbook could possibly mean.But as his investigations into both cases reveal connections to a five year old break-in to the IPRE lab, Angus uncovers a secret that could change the lives of everyone around him forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starlightwalking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Anna!! Thank you so much for always doing so much to make my writing better. This story would be a lot worse without everything you've helped me with in the past.
> 
> Thanks to Lily (waitineedaname) and Sandy (asandygraves) for their help in looking over this. I really appreciate it!

Angus McDonald was a fairly ordinary boy with an unremarkable life.

He lived with his guardian Taako in an apartment near the outskirts of a small city. He went to school everyday, taking all the advanced classes that were available to him. 

Some of his free time was spent with other children his age, watching movies, playing soccer or video games, and going on tiny adventures. More often, he was by himself, usually practicing his level 2 spells or reading. Mystery novels were his favorite.

Other than Taako, he didn’t have much family. The people that Taako worked with at the IPRE were basically his uncles and aunt though, so Angus didn’t feel like he was lacking much. All five members of the IPRE tried to play a part in taking care of Angus in between their important work at the research lab. It perhaps was not the ideal arrangement to raise a young boy, but Angus loved all of them, and they loved him, so it suited him just fine.

His life wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t something people would write epic poetry about either.

Taako’s new boyfriend, on the other hand, was  _ far _ from ordinary, not that Angus realized it at first.

They had been dating for almost two weeks when Taako first introduced Angus to him one Friday evening at a Wendy’s.

“I’m starting to get serious with Kravitz, so I, uh, I thought the two of you should, you know, get to know each other,” Taako had said the night before. He gave Angus a sharp look that dared him to laugh.

Angus merely grinned cheerfully. Taako hadn’t talked about Kravitz much, but the details he dropped made him seem like a really nice person. “I look forward to seeing him, sir! He sounds very cool!”

Taako let out his breath. “He is—but don’t go telling him I told you that,” he added quickly. “And don’t act stupid in front of him. Can’t have you embarrassing me.”

Angus knew that Taako had said that mostly to cover up his own embarrassment, but he couldn’t help but shoot back with a slightly sarcastic, “What if  _ he _ acts stupid?”

“Would I date someone who acts stupid?” Taako demanded.

“Maybe you just haven’t noticed yet,” Angus said. Taako had a good point, and he couldn’t think of a better comeback.

“Then I expect you to put those detective skills of yours to good use and tell me so I can ditch him,” Taako had said promptly, pulling Angus’s cap down over his eyes.

The comment hadn’t been meant literally, Angus knew, and he hadn’t  _ planned  _ to go investigating Taako’s new boyfriend. But he also hadn’t planned on Kravitz keeping so many suspicious secrets.

They met up with Kravitz in the Wendy’s parking lot. The first thing Angus noticed was how fancy he was. Kravitz was wearing a black and purple suit with a red tie, his dreads neatly pulled back with a purple ribbon. Taako frequently teased Angus for his slightly formal sense of fashion, but even he thought Kravitz was severely overdressed for dinner at a fast food restaurant.

The only thing out of place with Kravitz’s formal get up were the skull earrings he wore. From what Angus could tell at a distance, they were a very accurate reproduction, looking like someone had taken a pair of human skulls and shrunk them.

“Hey, Kravitz,” Taako said, his eyes lighting up once he spotted Kravitz. “This is Angus.” Taako looked down at Angus. “And I’m sure you can figure out who this guy is.”

“Nice to meet you, Angus,” Kravitz said politely.

“Hello, sir!” Angus reached up to shake Kravitz’s hand. Kravitz took it with a startled smile, probably not expecting such formality from an eleven year old. Angus got that a lot.

“Oh!” Angus couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise when their hands made contact. “You’re quite cold!”

“It’s—I have bad circulation,” Kravitz explained quickly.

“He’s like a reptile,” Taako said, his eyes darting between the two of them a little too rapidly to appear entirely casual. “Now, are we just going to stand out here all evening?”

“Heading in right now, sir,” Angus said, walking over to pull the door open for the other two.

“Thank you,” Kravitz said, giving Angus a friendly smile as he went through.

A proper detective never relied on instincts or first impressions, so Angus was not in the habit of making quick judgements, but he already sort of liked Kravitz.

After a minute of standing around and squinting at the menu, everyone decided what they wanted. Taako went to go stand in line to order while Kravitz and Angus got their seats. They found a booth in the corner fairly quickly, leaving them some time by themselves while they waited for Taako.

Determined not to let the silence become awkward, Angus asked, “What kind of things do you do, sir?”

It was an open ended question, allowing the other person to reveal more of themself in how they answered it. Angus had learned that trick in the latest Caleb Cleveland novel, and he had been looking for a chance to try it out.

“There’s really no need to call me ‘sir’,” Kravitz began.

“I prefer it, sir,” Angus said, just to be cheeky. That earned another smile.

“Then I won’t get in your way,” Kravitz said. “As for your question, I’m an investigator of sorts.”

Angus lit up. “Really, sir? I want to be a detective! Do you work for the police?”

“Taako didn’t mention this?” Kravitz asked, his tone too curious to be offended. “It’s sort of how we met.”

“He’s not very good at talking about people he likes,” Angus said. “Or maybe he didn’t want me to bother you all night with my questions,” he added as an afterthought.

“Well, I don’t mind questions,” Kravitz said. “But I’m afraid I can’t tell you many details. It’s all very top secret.” He winked.

“Top secret?” Angus ran through the possibilities in his mind. Even though the police couldn’t share everything with the public, they were rarely considered “top secret”, so that probably crossed them off the list. “Does that mean you work for the government?!”

“Um,” Kravitz said.

“Which agency?” Angus asked. Government work seemed like the likely option if it was top secret, but it wasn’t the only one. “Unless... do you work outside the government? Are you a private investigator?!”

“I don’t—I, uh yes. I work for the government,” Kravitz stammered out. He looked down at his hands, avoiding Angus’s gaze.

Whatever he did, he must not go undercover much, Angus thought. He wasn’t a very good liar. “What work do you do?”

“It’s mostly classified,” Kravitz said quickly. Then he looked back up at Angus and said with every appearance of honesty, “I suppose you could say I make the world a safer place.”

Angus opened his mouth to ask why Kravitz was lying about working for the government if he was doing good things, but a folded plastic card with a large black number landed on the table in front of him before he could say anything.

Taako slid into the seat next to Angus. “You aren’t bothering him with all your questions, are you?”

“It’s perfectly fine,” Kravitz said. Angus was pretty sure this was another lie. “Thank you for ordering our food.”

Under Kravitz’s soft smile, Taako shrugged in an overly nonchalant manner. “It’s nothing.”

There must have been some reason Kravitz lied—or at least didn’t tell the whole truth—and Angus couldn’t know if it was a good one or a bad one. Maybe Kravitz was working for a good organization but was sworn to secrecy. Maybe he was a spy or a vigilante. Taako was a good judge of character though, and Kravitz really did seem to believe he was making the world safer, so Angus wasn’t too worried.

Angus was curious, but he didn’t think Kravitz would tell him anything if he just asked directly. Instead, he decided to file the observation away in the section of his brain reserved for mysteries. If Taako and Kravitz continued to spend time together around him, he would have plenty of opportunity to find out more.

“So how  _ did _ the two of you meet, sirs?” Angus asked. He wanted to know the story now that it had been brought up, especially since it was also related to Kravitz’s job.

“Well, me, Magnus, and Merle were going about our business in the lab, doing our jobs, as you do, when some random—” Taako began.

“Where were Lucretia and Davenport?” Angus asked.

“Upstairs in the office, now who’s telling this story?” Taako demanded. “Anyway, this random guy shows up, telling us he’s with the law enforcement, and that our lab’s under investigation.”

Angus widened his eyes. The IPRE weren’t in any trouble, were they? They must not be; Kravitz wouldn’t be dating Taako otherwise, and Angus would have noticed the stress and tension in the IPRE if they were worried about getting arrested.

“They misunderstood,” Kravitz said quickly. He was looking at Angus and must have noticed his concern. “They weren’t suspects, they just had some information that might be relevant.”

“Their research?” Angus asked.

The IPRE was a group of scientists who mainly studied human cells, particularly the way they mutated over time. Their eventual goal was to find a cure for old age. That wasn’t something that could be done in one lifetime, so in the meantime, their studies on the effects of science and magic on cells had made significant headway into everything from cancer research to prosthetic limbs. It wasn’t hard to see a possible connection between that and information that could prove or disprove a person’s guilt.

But Kravitz shook his head. “No, not that—well, sort of. See, the IPRE lab was broken into about five years ago.”

“It was?!” Angus asked. He looked over at Taako. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“Didn’t seem worth mentioning, homie,” Taako said with a shrug. “It sucked, but after we fixed up the place, it was all behind us. Practically forgotten.”

“A huge chunk of their research was stolen,” Kravitz continued. “Part of the lab was destroyed too, but the one responsible for it was never caught. I thought it might have something to do with the case I’m currently working on.”

“Did it?” Angus asked, his eyes wide. Despite taking place three years before Angus had been taken in by Taako, the crime felt personal, and he wanted to know everything.

Kravitz shrugged. “I don’t know. None of the IPRE people could remember what information had been stolen, and any records that might have shown what was missing were erased.”

“We still have all the data from the experiments we remember working on, so whatever’s gone must not have been too important,” Taako said.

“Without knowing what was taken, it’s hard to guess who did it and why, or if it’s even the same person as the one I’m after,” Kravitz said.

“But Krav here only got all that info after a bit of a fight  _ avec moi _ ,” Taako said, lifting his hand with a flourish to point at himself.

“A fight?!” Angus exclaimed. Why hadn’t Taako told him about this encounter after it first happened?

“It was really more of an argument than a  _ fight _ ,” Kravitz said. “Taako threw a squid at me, but other than that it was completely nonphysical, and we got it sorted out fairly quickly.”

“For once, Merle’s Zone of Truth was useful,” Taako muttered.

“That’s quite unusual, sir!” Angus remarked, causing Taako to grin widely. 

He wasn’t quite sure how that situation would lead to the two of them becoming boyfriends, but people could work in strange ways, and that was hardly the biggest mystery he had learned about that night.

Their food arrived at that moment, and all three of them became distracted with eating. Conversation resumed after a bit, turning towards subjects less related to anybody’s job. Angus had fun, even if he didn’t uncover anymore of Kravitz’s secret.

Kravitz learned about Angus’s love of mystery novels, and he promised to read at least the first Caleb Cleveland novel. Angus asked Kravitz about his family, but after hearing he didn’t really have any, Angus didn’t push, despite the suspicious part of his mind urging him on. At one point Taako snorted some sprite up his nose when Kravitz had used the word ‘groovy’ completely unironically.

All in all, Angus considered it a fun night and a nice first meeting for someone who was probably going to become a big part of his life.

They lingered at their booth for a while after they finished eating to continue chatting, but eventually it became late enough that they decided they should probably leave. Taako gave Kravitz a quick kiss right outside the restaurant, then they said their goodbyes and parted ways.

“You two certainly talked a lot,” Taako said on the drive home, not bothering to hide his smug expression.

“We have a lot in common, sir!” Angus said. “It’s nice to talk to someone about my detective novels! I really hope he likes the Caleb Cleveland books too, because there’s a really clever twist at the end of the sixth book and—”

“What do you think of him?” Taako asked, cutting off his rambling. He briefly met Angus’s eyes through the rearview mirror.

“I like him,” Angus said. Other than his vague suspicions, it was the truth. And, as Angus reminded himself, holding secrets did not mean that a person was bad. In this case, it might not be.

“Good,” Taako said, his grip on the steering wheel loosening ever so slightly. “I’d hate to kick one of you out of my life.”

It wasn’t that funny of a goof, or maybe Angus was just distracted, but he laughed a little anyway. He hoped that he was mistaken about Kravitz hiding something, that he was just making a mountain out of a molehill. But part of him (not that a good detective should ever rely on instinct) knew that he was not.

...

The Case of the Mysterious Boyfriend, as Angus had rather unimaginatively titled it, was far from the first case he had ever investigated. Ever since he had gotten really into detective novels a few months before he met Taako, he had sought out mysteries to solve.

Most of them were pretty simple. Recently, there had been the Case of the Missing Wallet (Magnus had left it in the lab by accident), the Case of the Stolen Stuffed Dinosaur (Mookie was jealous of all the time Mavis had spent playing with their favorite toy, so he had taken it for himself), and many others of that nature.

Once, Angus had gone to the IPRE lab for Take Your Child to Work Day and figured out that Davenport’s missing sandwich had been appropriated by Magnus and Taako for an experiment involving mold. It was one of Angus’s more interesting mysteries.

Despite the simple nature of most of his cases, Angus was very good at what he did. His friends and family could always count on him to find anything they were missing. He had even earned a reputation for himself at his school after discovering that the person responsible for the school’s disappearing funds was an embezzling janitor.

There was only one mystery Angus had ever discovered that truly stumped him, even if he wasn’t certain if he could consider it a proper case or not. 

It started one night about a year before, when Taako and Angus were out grocery shopping. As they were walking past some rain gear, Taako had been reminded of a funny event from his past. He had started recounting the story, describing his urge to shoplift an umbrella, his extreme confidence in himself, and the heart-stopping moment when he realized that he was caught.

But when the time came to tell the funny part where he managed to get away, Taako had frozen, the shopping cart rolling to a halt. “And then I—. That’s—I—I don’t. I don’t remember?” He frowned, his voice growing quieter as he spoke until he was mostly muttering to himself. “I swear I—but that would need two people... I was alone, wasn’t I? I don’t... There was nobody with me...”

Taako’s expression had not been the slightly scrunched up look of someone who was puzzled to find they could no longer recall something they once knew. It was the wide-eyed distress of someone who only just realized they were missing something very important. Angus could see the tightness of Taako’s fingers around the shopping cart, the way he was sagging forward, like the cart was the only thing keeping him upright.

“Sir! Are you okay?” Angus had asked. This seemed to break Taako out of whatever state he was in, and he quickly changed the subject, determinedly rushing through the rest of their shopping.

It was only later when Angus was lying in bed that night that he really had the time to go over what had happened.

At that point, he had been living with Taako for ten months. During that time, he had come to learn that Taako could be quite forgetful, especially about things that had happened more than a few years before. Taako’s loss of memory had never seemed to strike him as hard as it had on this occasion, but then again, Taako had never been expecting his memory to be there so strongly.

Angus had decided to make a note of it in his journal. Since that day, he had been recording relevant evidence, though he wasn’t quite sure what it was evidence of, nor what to do with it once it was collected.

Another difficulty with solving this mystery lay in figuring out which incidents of memory loss were unusual and what were the completely normal stuff that just came with the passing of time.

Sometimes it was obviously unusual, like that time in the grocery store. Other times, Angus thought it might be, but he couldn’t be sure. Like the one time with the key.

A few months after the shopping incident, Angus had found a key in the back of the closet that didn’t fit any of the doors in the apartment or even the IPRE lab. He took it to Taako, wondering if perhaps it was from the last place Taako had lived in. It was fairly distinctive—black with printed red flames on the handle—so Angus expected Taako to know where it came from.

Taako had stared at the key for a very long time, and he didn’t seem fully present when he said that he had never seen the key before in his life. There was no reason to lie, so Angus believed him, even when Taako insisted that they keep the key.

After a bit of research, Angus was fairly confident his key opened a house or apartment door, but he had no idea where to start looking for the lock that fit it. This clue, if it had even been one to begin with, was a dead end.

Even without the blurry boundaries between what was relevant and what wasn’t, nothing about the mystery made sense. No matter which missing memories Angus counted as “strange” and which ones he ignored, there was no pattern to them. Many seemed to revolve around Taako’s childhood, but just as many didn’t, and there were plenty of instances where Angus couldn’t figure out what exactly was missing, just that something was.

With little idea of what he was trying to solve, Angus ranked it low on his list of priorities. He decided to tuck the mystery away in order to focus on the Case of the Mysterious Boyfriend and its related case, the Case of the Stolen Research. Not that Angus had grand plans of solving a five year old crime, but it was something interesting to think about.

But just because Angus was done with the case, didn’t mean that the case was done with him. Or at least that was what Angus imagined the narration would read if his life was a Caleb Cleveland novel.

A few days after the dinner at Wendy’s, Angus and Taako were in the kitchen, preparing for their weekly Monday dessert-baking.

“We need something good to start the week off,” Taako had said a couple months ago, and the tradition had stuck.

“So what are we making today, Ango?” Taako asked, once they had washed their hands and donned their aprons.

Angus considered his choices. Cakes, cookies, pies, pastries, and the dozens of others they had made before. He wasn’t in the mood for any of them in particular. “Something new!”

“Something new, huh? You don’t make this easy for me.” Taako tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You know, I haven’t made macaroons in a long time, but I do know a good recipe.”

“Sounds perfect, sir!” Angus said, excited to taste a macaroon. They had been mentioned in a couple of books he liked, but he had never eaten one before.

Taako dug through the cupboard full of cookbooks and pulled out an old recipe book from the back. He set it on the counter and flipped to a page covered by various scribbles. Angus rested his forearms on the countertop, pushing his weight onto them to lift himself up onto the tips of his toes so he could see the page more clearly.

Someone—not Taako, judging by the handwriting—had crossed out some of the measurements and replaced them with slightly different ones. Angus labelled this person as A, in order to keep his observations uncomplicated.

At the bottom of the ingredients list, Taako had added his own notes, listing a couple more spices and such. Below that he had edited the instructions “so that even someone like Barold can’t mess this up.”

On the margins, someone (neither Taako nor A; Angus decided to call them B) had doodled an intricate heart encircling the words “Lup + Barry”. Underneath that, Taako had written “NERDS” which was followed by A writing “Screw that noise, it was sweet” with a little heart after that. The line of conversation ended with a simple smiley face drawn by B.

Angus could draw several conclusions from this:

  1. Taako knew both A and B pretty well, enough that they would write in his cookbook and goof around with him.
  2. A and B were almost certainly Lup and Barry, though Angus did not have enough information to determine for sure which one was which.
  3. Lup and Barry had some kind of romantic connection, though Angus supposed it could have just been a joke.



In all the time Angus had been looking at the page, Taako hadn’t said a thing. Absorbed in his observations, Angus hadn’t even thought to look at Taako’s reaction, but as soon as he realized how long the quiet had stretched on, Angus felt a jolt of concern.

He glanced up to see Taako staring blankly at the page, his hand clutching the edge of the counter. It reminded Angus worryingly of the shopping incident.

“Taa—?” Angus began.

All of a sudden, Taako slammed the book shut, causing Angus to jump. Taako’s nose was turning red in the way that many people’s noses did right before they started crying, and Angus couldn’t fathom why.

“Sir? Are you alright? Who were these people?” Angus asked, worry causing his words to tumble out almost unintelligibly. He wondered if touching Taako’s arm would make things better or worse. 

Angus was very smart, but he was also just a boy, and he had no idea how to stop Taako from looking like he was falling to pieces in the middle of their kitchen. His insides were all twisted up, and he felt caught between the desperation of wanting to do anything to help and the terror of accidentally doing something to make it worse.

“I don’t know!” Taako snapped. Angus flinched. In the two years they had lived together, Taako had never raised his voice around Angus.

Taako seemed to realize this because in the next moment, he lost the harsh edge in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said in a quieter tone. “I just—I don’t know what’s going on. I need to be alone right now.”

Given how suddenly this had come on, Angus didn’t think it would be smart to leave Taako alone, but he wasn’t sure if pushing Taako would be any better. Angus knew that people didn’t always make the best decisions for themselves, but he didn’t know what the best decision was or what he could accomplish by staying.

Feeling helpless and profoundly useless, Angus retreated to his room, taking the cookbook with him—it was evidence after all. Once inside, he couldn’t bring himself to look at it, not while Taako was in such distress just beyond the door. Even Angus knew when it was not the time for mysteries.

Angus slumped to the ground and sat there in silence for a long time.


	2. Chapter 2

Taako seemed fine the next morning. There was no remaining trace of yesterday’s breakdown, and he brushed off Angus’s questions about why he had reacted so strongly to the writing in the cookbook.

“Don’t sweat it, I’m all good now, homie,” Taako said breezily, artfully flipping an omelet off the pan and onto Angus’s plate. “I don’t even know what that was all about. We’ll make the macaroons some other time this week, okay?”

It wasn’t the lack of dessert that had Angus so upset, but he had to hurry to catch the bus, so there wasn’t time to talk about it.

Two years of living together had made Angus pretty good at seeing through Taako’s bullshit, and Taako’s nonchalance didn’t seem like an act.

It still worried Angus though. Why hadn’t Taako known who Lup and Barry were, even though they clearly used to know each other? Why had Taako been so emotionally affected by seeing their written conversations and notes, even though he said he didn’t know anything about them? And how had he been able to move past all of that so easily the next day?

Angus was pretty sure the answers were tied up with the whole mystery of Taako’s weird memory gaps, but even a full day of pondering the possibilities gave him no further insight.

Classes passed quickly, and Angus was out the school doors in what felt like no time at all.

Instead of heading towards the buses, Angus headed toward the front entrance of the school. Under the guidance of the crossing guard, he followed a crowd of students across the street before splitting off to go his own direction. Lucretia took Tuesdays off, so Angus usually went to her house after school rather than being home alone.

The temperature wasn’t that cold, but the wind made Angus feel very chilly, even through his jacket. He walked quickly, and by the time he reached Lucretia’s driveway, the exercise had made him mostly warm.

Even though Lucretia insisted that Angus could always let himself in, he could never bring himself to simply enter her home without giving notice. He rang the doorbell instead, as usual. This time, there was no sound of footsteps coming towards the door, even after he waited several seconds.

Hesitantly, Angus raised his hand to the doorknob. Lucretia had said multiple times that it was okay to just come, he reminded himself. And perhaps her hands were full right now, so it would actually be a convenience to her if he let himself in. He took a deep breath and twisted the knob.

It was locked.

Did Lucretia forget about him? Angus wondered, his heart accelerating in his chest. If she wasn’t inside, he would just have to wait here on her doorstep until she returned or Taako came to pick him up, and it wasn’t _that_ cold this time of year, but it might rain, and then he would be lonely and wet and abandoned and—

Lucretia’s car pulled up into the driveway, the driver’s door opening before the car had come to a complete stop. Angus felt like he could breathe again, his limbs wobbly from relief.

“I’m so sorry!” Lucretia said. She was out of her car and on the doorstep before Angus could think to reply, her red IPRE lab coat swishing behind her. “There was a traffic accident, and it took me forever to get past it. I’m really sorry. I hope you haven’t been waiting long! Are you okay?”

“I wasn’t even here a minute, ma’am. I’m fine,” Angus said. He hadn’t been completely fine in the infinitely long seconds before Lucretia arrived, but he was now, which was what really mattered.

“I’m sorry,” Lucretia said again as she unlocked the door. “I’ll be sure to leave earlier next time, so this doesn’t happen again.”

“I thought you weren’t working today?” Angus said, following her inside. He set his backpack down by the door and began taking off his shoes. The slight trembling of his fingers made him take multiple tries to untie his laces.

“We’re onto something big at the lab,” Lucretia said. “There’s a lot that needs to be done right now.”

She took her lab coat off and hung it on a hook near the door. Once, Angus had asked why they all wore red lab coats instead of the stereotypical white, and Merle told him it was to hide the bloodstains. Angus wasn’t entirely sure if Merle was just messing with him or not.

“Taako makes it sound like that’s always the case,” Angus said. Taako frequently complained about the amount of work he had to do, but he also had the tendency to exaggerate about that kind of thing, so Angus hadn’t necessarily taken his word for it.

“He’s not wrong. We always have way too much to do.” Lucretia sighed and set her purse down on the counter. “Want anything to drink?”

“Just water, please.”

“We really need a couple more people working with us,” Lucretia continued. She filled a glass with water, placing it on the counter.

“Why don’t you just hire more?” Angus asked, climbing onto one of the tall chairs on the other side of the counter. He didn’t know the details of the IPRE’s inner workings, but he knew they weren’t low on funds.

Lucretia laughed. “That’d be the smart solution, right? I guess it’s just too much effort to go through the hiring process, and the five of us have such a good dynamic. Newcomers would just mess it up.”

“Oh, okay,” Angus said, and he could sort of understand. With the amount that everybody in the IPRE were involved in his life, it would be a weird adjustment for Angus to make, and he wouldn’t even have to work with them every day.

Lucretia poured herself her own glass of water and took a sip from it. “Do you have homework?”

“Not much. Only math today,” Angus said, his heart sinking at the reminder. He was willing to do anything to procrastinate that for a little longer. “But actually I had some questions for you, if you don’t mind?”

“Oh, no. I don’t mind,” Lucretia said. “What do you want to know?”

“Taako told me about the lab break in five years ago,” Angus said. “What happened there?”

Lucretia described the incident, and it was more or less the same thing Taako had said. All of it was vague, and there were few helpful details. Since nobody was telling him anything useful on their own, he would have to go digging for the clues himself.

“Kravitz said that part of the lab was destroyed that night,” Angus said. “What was in that part of the lab?”

Lucretia thought about it, frowning slightly. “You know, I don’t quite remember. It must have been spare lab space or something.”

“Why do you say it ‘must have been’?” Angus asked, wondering how she could have forgotten such an important detail. Maybe it was just because of what had happened the night before, but Lucretia’s words made Angus think of Taako’s spotty memory.

It didn’t necessarily have anything to do with that—people not remembering everything was hardly out of the ordinary—but it did seem strange for Lucretia to forget something so big. Angus was only eleven, but if part of his parents’ house had been destroyed five years before, he was certain he would remember it well, and five years was comparatively less time for an adult like Lucretia than it would be for him.

“Well, it wasn’t the office, break room, bathroom, or any of our main workstations, and we didn’t lose any important equipment, so it couldn’t have been a storage room. Which leaves spare lab space,” Lucretia explained.

Angus updated his previous thought. This was definitely weird memory business. The way Lucretia had come to that conclusion was far too detached, as if she had read a somewhat incomplete file of the incident, rather than remembered something that had happened very close to her.

If strange memory loss was something that affected both Taako and Lucretia, that would change the possible causes. Angus moved “experiment gone wrong” to the top of his list. He would have to check the other IPRE for similar signs.

Wondering what other connections lay between Taako and Lucretia, Angus asked on impulse, “Do you know who Lup and Barry are?”

Lucretia dropped her glass of water. Her eyes widened for half a second before the glass shattered on the floor, and her focus snapped back into the present. In one swift motion, she drew her wand, casting a spell to gather all the pieces and carry them into the trash.

“Are you okay?!” Angus asked, feeling a sense of deja vu. He had been asking that question too much recently. His heart had jumped at the sudden noise, but it was already starting to slow back down.

“I think so,” Lucretia said. Her eyebrows were furrowed as she stared at the hand that had held the glass. “I’ve... never heard of them, but for some reason... never mind.”

She had a similar look as Taako had in the grocery store, only a little less distressed. If Angus hadn’t already suspected a connection between Taako and Lucretia’s memory, he certainly would now, with the way they had both reacted to the mention of Lup and Barry.

“For some reason what?” Angus pressed.

“I don’t know, it just surprised me I guess,” Lucretia said, her voice still a little shaky. “Is that it for your questions?”

“Yes, thank you, ma’am,” Angus said. There were a thousand more things he wanted to know, but he doubted Lucretia had the answers. Even if she did, he didn’t want to push her right now.

Angus went to the table to do his homework, and Lucretia soon left to do her own thing in her office.

It was hard to concentrate on math when his mind kept drifting off to what had just happened with Lucretia and what had happened with Taako the day before. Angus hoped Lucretia wasn’t too upset by his questioning. She hadn’t seemed nearly as shaken as Taako had the day before, and she frequently went off to do IPRE work whenever he was busy with his own stuff, so she wasn’t acting too out of the ordinary or anything.

The tight pit in his stomach didn’t seem ready to leave anytime soon though, even with this reassurance.

In light of all that had happened recently, Angus decided he could officially move the weird loosely connected memory-related incidents to a “case” status. The Mystery of the Missing Memories had a nice ring to it. He just wished he knew if this was something dangerous or something unusual because one of those options required a lot more urgency than the other.

All three of his major cases were now connected in one way or another, though Angus didn’t know how that was significant.

Kravitz was lying about his job. His job involved investigations into the IPRE break in. Neither Lucretia nor Taako could remember as much about the break in as Angus thought they should be able to. If only Angus could figure out what all of that meant.

But the afternoon soon showed Angus that no amount of thinking could even start piecing together the clues he currently had. He just didn’t have enough evidence at this point.

Eventually, he gave up on trying to do his math homework, moving on to reread one of his favorite Caleb Cleveland novels. Maybe something in the story would inspire him.

After a bit, Lucretia came back out into the main living space. She hummed to herself as she swept the floor, but didn’t interrupt Angus’s reading. Once she finished, she settled down on the couch with her laptop, the steady clicking of keys comfortably filling the air. It was all very normal, and Angus wondered if he should be concerned that the emotional distress related to Lup and Barry had such little lasting effect.

Halfway through the second chapter, Angus got a text from Taako.

_Krav’s coming over for dinner, u cool?_

_Sure thing sir!_ Angus replied. _It’s kind of short notice though, isn’t it?_

_Yeah, well, his job is unpredictable. It makes scheduling things a bitch, but there’s always that fun spontaneous aspect_

It wasn’t a particularly helpful piece of information about Kravitz’s job, but Angus reached for his journal to jot it down anyway. One could never know what information was essential and what wasn’t until after the mystery was solved.

While he was at it, Angus flipped to a different page to brainstorm some questions that wouldn’t be strange to ask as small talk but might push Kravitz into revealing a bit of whatever secret he was hiding. If things went well, he might even make significant headway on _all three_ of his cases today.

...

Later that evening, Angus was back home reading the wikipedia page on eucalyptus trees, having gotten distracted from his original search on the state of Kansas, when someone knocked on the door.

“Go answer that,” Taako commanded from the kitchen where something spicy was being cooked.

Shoving his phone in his pocket, Angus leaped up and raced to the door. Opening it revealed Kravitz, as expected. He was wearing a different suit than last time, but it was just as nice.

“Good evening, sir!” Angus said. He glanced past Kravitz to the parking lot outside.

“Hello, Angus,” Kravitz replied.

“Did you walk here, sir?” Angus asked.

Kravitz stared blankly at him. “What?”

“There’s no new cars in the parking lot,” Angus explained, gesturing at the ground below. It was completely possible that Kravitz had parked in a different lot, but since there were many empty spaces in this one, it would be rather inefficient. Now that he didn’t need to see the outside anymore, Angus stepped back to let Kravitz in.

“Oh,” Kravitz said, glancing behind him at the parking lot before closing the door behind him. “Yes, I, um, I did walk here. But it wasn’t far. How are you doing?”

The sudden change in conversation was suspicious, but Angus couldn’t possibly guess what Kravitz might be trying to hide, so he decided to follow along. “I’m quite well, sir! Taako hasn’t finished making dinner yet, but he will soon.”

Kravitz took off his shoes, setting them neatly together in the corner of the hall. “It smells delicious,” he said loudly enough to be clearly heard from the other room.

“So do you, darling,” Taako called back, even though he hadn’t been within eyesight of Kravitz that evening, much less within smelling distance. Angus figured it was just an instinctive joke, though not a particularly funny one.

Kravitz chuckled anyway and stepped into the kitchin, waiting for Taako to set down his bowl of sauce before hugging him.

The next few minutes were full of bustle as Kravitz tried to help Taako finish making the meal. He was quite terrible at it despite his best efforts, so Taako banished him to setting the table. Angus ended up doing most of the work since Kravitz didn’t know where any of the dishes or silverware were kept, but he appreciated Kravitz’s attempts to help. When Merle came over, he just sat on the couch and made fun of Angus.

Even with only one other person, the apartment felt twice as full as it normally did. Despite enjoying his peace and quiet, Angus found that he actually quite liked it this way. Kravitz comfortably filled the empty spaces that Taako and Angus alone couldn’t quite manage to get to.

Eventually, they all settled down at the table and began eating with gusto. Taako smirked at the ‘mmm’ noises Kravitz made and the praise Angus gave, but other than that, the table was quiet as they focused on the food.

Taako was the one to finally start a conversation. “Learn anything fun at your nerd school, Ango?”

Angus went to a regular public middle school, but the last time he had pointed that out, Taako had said that Angus was such a nerd that anywhere he went would automatically become a nerd school through his mere presence.

“We discussed the First World War, sir,” Angus said.

Kravitz winced, the hand holding his fork lowering down to the table. “A truly terrible war—not that any wars are _good_. I suppose you learned about the trenches and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the resulting colonization of the Middle East and such?”

Angus shook his head, wishing that the teacher _had_ talked about those things. “No. We only really discussed Ferdinand and his assassination. The school district isn’t in favor of teaching students about violence or anything that could paint white people in a negative light until high school.”

“I suppose my history classes were hardly representative of the whole truth either,” Kravitz acknowledged. “But I had hoped that it would have improved more by now.”

Taako snorted. “I don’t know how fast you expect change to come, but it’s only been like twenty years since we were in middle school.”

A strange expression flashed across Kravitz’s face, vanishing almost too quickly for Angus to catch it.

“Where did you go to school, sir?” Angus asked, resolving to pay closer attention to what Kravitz reacted to and in what way he did.

“I grew up in Phandalin and went to the local school there,” Kravitz said.

“Never heard of it,” Taako said. “Is it far from here?”

“Fairly,” Kravitz replied, but he didn’t elaborate. “What about you?”

“Oh, I grew up here and there,” Taako said, waving his hand airily as if he had lived a life of luxurious travel instead of being tossed from foster home to foster home and then eventually onto the streets. “Been on my own for quite awhile, you know?”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” Angus said. “Here in this city I mean, not _here_.” He waved around at the room for emphasis.

“Oh?” Kravitz asked in a way that invited him to continue without demanding it.

“He didn’t live with _me_ his whole life, that’s for sure,” Taako said.

“How did that happen then? You living with Taako?” Kravitz asked. “I mean—you don’t have to answer,” he added quickly.

Even though the full story was not a particularly pleasant one, Angus didn’t mind giving the basics. “I met Taako, Magnus, and Merle two and a half years ago on a subway while I was trying to solve a mystery. It was late at night, so there were only a couple people there, and he helped me out.”

Taako gave Angus a smile that was too fond to be a smirk. “He had that whole outfit, you know? Magnifying glass and, what’s it called? A deerhunter—”

“Deerstalker,” Angus corrected.

“—whatever cap, and star-tipped wand that he didn’t even know how to use, you know the whole Sherlock Holmes get up.”

It wasn’t the clothing Angus normally would have wanted to wear, but his grandfather had been pretty transphobic, and he wouldn’t let Angus wear masculine clothing. His grandfather did tolerate most of Angus’s other passions though, so if Angus wanted to dress up as a famous character that just so happened to be a man, his grandfather would allow it.

Kravitz raised an eyebrow. “That sounds adorable. Do you have a picture?”

“Of course!” Taako said, looking rather offended. “Who do you take me for?” He grabbed his phone, tapping and swiping at the screen.

“Sirs!” Angus protested. In his Sherlock Holmes outfit, he had passed as a cis boy, but it wasn’t what he would have worn if given complete freedom to choose, so it was rather embarrassing to have it be seen. “Really, there’s no need—!”

But Taako had already held his phone out for Kravitz to see. “He’s a baby detective!”

“Aww!”

“Anyway,” Angus continued, his cheeks hot. “I solved the mystery, then I convinced Taako to give me some magic lessons.”

“The thief started a fight before the police came, and Angus was alone out there, practically defenseless!” Taako said, as if responding to some accusation of soft-heartedness. “I had to do _something_ in case it happened again without a talented wizard around to save his ass. Now he can actually use that wand he carries.”

“My grandfather died a few months later, and Taako adopted me,” Angus said. That part had not been so straightforward, but he didn’t want to bring all of that up right now.

Taako reached over to squeeze Angus’s shoulder. “Yeah, and now I’m stuck with the kid. He should come with a sign, like ‘Warning: You May Become Emotionally Attached.’”

“I can see why,” Kravitz said, grinning at Angus. “What mystery were you trying to solve on a train so late at night?”

“Oh, this one was one of my best cases ever!” Angus said, already lining up the important plot points in his head. “It started when my grandfather’s silverware went missing...”

With Taako butting in every few sentences to fix some detail or add commentary, Angus explained the Case of the Lost Silverware, his first big mystery.

“Are all of your investigations top secret?” Angus asked Kravitz afterwards. “Or can you tell me about any of them?”

“Sorry,” Kravitz said, which was answer enough. “But I can tell you a bit about the First World War, since apparently your classes didn’t cover that well.”

He selected one of his more “child-friendly” stories of some battle. While he left out all the gorier details, he painted a vivid picture of the people and place involved, adding just enough humor to keep it from becoming depressing.

“You’re a very good storyteller, sir,” Angus said. “It’s almost like you were there yourself!”

Kravitz choked on the baklava they were eating for dessert. “Yeah. Almost.”

“Psht,” Taako said, waving his hand dismissively. “I can tell you a story so good that I’ll make you believe that _you_ were there. No ‘almost’ involved.”

He proceeded to recount an event that happened at the lab a few months back. At no point did Angus ever think he was anywhere other than his living room, but it was the funniest story by far.

Kravitz was breathless by the end of it, and between his giggles, he managed to say, “That—that was the most I’ve—I’ve laughed in like two hundred years!”

Angus’s diaphragm ached, and his lips felt stretched out from grinning too hard, so he agreed with Kravitz.

“You haven’t been hanging around me enough then,” Taako said, smirking slightly.

“Well, I wouldn’t be opposed to remedying that,” Kravitz said quietly, his laughter dying down.

“I—I could fit you into my schedule,” Taako said. He and Kravitz had been staring at each other for an uncomfortably long time.

“I would also enjoy seeing more of Mr. Kravitz,” Angus chimed in. Both the adults whipped their heads to look at him in eerie unison, and Angus wondered if they had forgotten he was there.

“Yes, we all would,” Taako said quickly.

“Well,” Kravitz said, glancing at his watch. “It’s starting to get late. I shouldn’t keep the two of you up.”

“No, it’s fine,” Taako said.

“Isn’t it a weekday night?” Kravitz asked.

“Yeah, so Angus has to go to bed. I’m an adult though, which means that I get to set my own bedtime.” Taako raised a challenging eyebrow at Kravitz.

“If you’re sure...” Kravitz said, shifting slightly like he wanted to stand up but wasn’t sure if he should.

“Of course I am,” Taako said. “I wouldn’t say anything if I wasn’t.” He glanced over at Angus, silently checking to make sure it was okay with him.

“I’ll agree as long as you don’t talk loudly or anything,” Angus said. When the other members of the IPRE came over, there always seemed to be uproarious laughter and friendly shouting involved, which was annoying when Angus was really tired. “Because if you do, I won’t be able to sleep anyway, so I might as well stay up late in the living room.”

“You drive a hard bargain, little man,” Taako said. “Deal.” He reached out his hand to Angus, and they shook on it.

“Good night, sirs!” Angus said.

“It was nice talking to you,” Kravitz said, giving him a little wave.

As Angus walked past, Taako ruffled his hair in the way Angus hated when anybody else did it. “Night, Ango.”

Once he had changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth, Angus jotted down a few notes in his detective journal, which reminded him to do a quick google search for a place called Phandalin.

To his confusion, the only place of that name had been a small city in Massachusetts. It had burned down almost a century ago, and it had not been rebuilt since then.

Kravitz had to be telling a lie by saying he had grown up there, but it was a strange one to give. Why would he say something so transparent? Surely an investigator would know better than to give facts that could easily be disproved. And it must have been pre-decided too, since Kravitz had no hesitation or stuttering like he did when a question caught him off guard.

Unless... Angus thought about the other case Kravitz was connected to, the one regarding the IPRE, a research facility dedicated to finding the key to indefinite life. What if Kravitz _was_ telling the truth?

Other pieces of evidence fell into place the more Angus thought about it. There was the odd expression Kravitz had when Taako said both of them had been in middle school twenty years ago, the way he reacted when Angus jokingly said Kravitz might have been in the First World War battle, and even how he said “groovy” completely unironically. It almost made a certain kind of sense.

It would bring up a thousand other questions, and that wasn’t even counting the hows and whys of it all. If Kravitz really was immortal, Angus wanted to know everything about his life.

Angus had spent enough time in history class wondering how different life would be for him as a black kid compared to the typical white American that the school focused on in every time period they studied. He didn’t have to do extra imagining to think about how Kravitz’s life might have been if he was really immortal.

Hearing about how it actually was to be alive in the past would be the coolest thing that had ever happened to Angus. He would give anything to know more about this aspect of American life that history books tended to skim over.

Except, Angus reminded himself, the IPRE was far from any discoveries that would extend life to that scale, much less bring eternal youth. Any rumors about immortal beings were mere myth and urban legends. It would be ridiculous to think otherwise.

And wasn’t this whole investigation sort of silly once he thought about it? The ‘lies’ Kravitz were telling didn’t match up to make any kind of coherent picture; maybe Angus was simply misreading the signs.

Besides, it was hardly surprising that an investigator would have a job that involved many classified secrets. It wasn’t cause for suspicion. Kravitz could have come from a different place called Phandalin, somewhere too small to show up in a quick search, or maybe with a weird spelling like Fandolyn or something else.

Angus wondered if he was just looking for something to be suspicious of, some reason to dislike Kravitz. There was plausible evidence to support this hypothesis, more so than the ‘over a hundred years old Kravitz’ one.

Being somewhat knowledgeable in basic psychology, Angus knew it wasn’t uncommon to dislike someone if they were getting very close to somebody else that a person cared for. Maybe Angus’s subconscious mind was afraid that Kravitz would steal all of Taako’s attention and love, making Taako realize that he had made a mistake by taking Angus in and cause him to toss Angus out of his life and home.

Angus didn’t _think_ he was purposefully misreading and overreacting to Kravitz’s ordinary actions, but he also knew the brain was remarkably good at fooling itself.

Puzzling this all out would require more self-reflection than he was willing to do right now when he was so tired, but Angus decided that it would probably be best to lower the case in priority. With new evidence on the Mystery of the Missing Memories that showed it to be more widespread and potentially more dangerous than he had previously thought, he had more important things to consider than something that was probably fueled mostly by his insecurities.

If people he cared about were losing memories, that could have troubling implications. He should focus on that instead of a possibly half-imagined and certainly irrelevant case.

With that decided, Angus tried to shove away all suspicions of Kravitz as he turned over to the other side of his bed. Within minutes, he was asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angus learns a bit more about Kravitz and Barry and Lup. None of his conclusions point to anything good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is mostly written, so I was planning on trying to update this about once a week, but I just started college, and that ate up a bunch of my time. Then when I did have time, instead of editing, I wrote a bit in this universe from Taako’s perspective, so at least you have that to look forward to? Sorry for being so late.  
> Also, in case this wasn’t already clear, everything the IPRE does is based off what they were like in canon and not at all like how actual scientists work.

The way the Angus saw it, there were two big leads he needed to follow, one for each of his investigations: the Case of the Stolen Research and Mystery of the Missing Memories. 

For the first, he planned to go through all of the IPRE’s records to see if there was any clues the thief hadn’t wiped. There might be something accidentally left behind that could indicate what had been stolen or what part of the lab had been destroyed. Angus also wanted to talk to the other members of the IPRE to see if they had memory gaps that lined up with Lucretia and Taako’s. 

He wouldn’t be able to do any of that without going to the lab though, so he would have to wait until the weekend to look into this case.

The simpler lead to follow involved searching the cookbook for any other hints of who Lup and Barry were and what their relation to Taako was. All he needed for that was some time in the apartment. Most days, he had a few hours to himself before Taako came back home from work, which was perfect for some quiet reading and detectiving.

As he sat through school that Wednesday, Angus could scarcely think of anything else, his mind absorbed in the excitement of all the potential secrets he could uncover once he finally had the time to look through that book.

In response to his eagerness, school seemed to last forever. Each minute ticked past agonizingly slow, and even the bus home seemed to catch every red light possible. 

When his stop finally came, Angus practically ran to his room, his heart pounding in anticipation. Wanting to both extend the moment of anticipation forever and dive in as quickly as possible, Angus took a deep breath and pulled the cookbook out from under his bed.

He started by examining the book itself. 

It wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary, being nearly fifteen years old and containing about a hundred different recipes of various kinds of desserts. When Angus looked it up online to research the people who made it, results for newer editions or books of more specialized categories showed up. As far as Angus could tell, there was nothing to be learned from just the book.

Flipping through the pages revealed dozens of annotations on nearly every page, and this was the part that Angus had really been excited for. He began to read, despite the small part of him that wanted to stall just to keep the suspense.

The writing on the pages largely came from Taako and A (who Angus quickly learned was Lup). Most of their comments were edits to the ingredients, additional instructions, suggestions for side dishes, and other notes to improve each recipe. 

B (whose full name was written out as Barold J. Bluejeans by Taako on multiple occasions, though Angus couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not) didn’t write much but he did often doodle on the margins.

From some of the comments, it appeared that Barry was very bad at baking. Angus guessed that Barry would hang around in the kitchen, creating all those drawings while Lup and Taako worked. His subject matter ranged from mongooses to human bones to complex molecules. Angus couldn’t tell for certain, but they all appeared pretty accurate. It would be a safe bet, Angus figured, to assume that Barry had a strong background in biology and chemistry.

Occasionally, there were little threads of conversation, such as the one found on the macaroon recipe. Almost all of them were teasing in nature, and Angus learned little from them other than that all three of them were very close.

Given all of that, there was no natural explanation Angus could think of for why Taako would claim not to know them. And with the IPRE being as close with each other as they were, there seemed to be no reason why Lucretia hadn’t recognized the names of people who had clearly been Taako’s good friends.

This suggested that something was very wrong.

About a third way through the pie section of the book, Angus found a loose hair that had been trapped between two of the pages. It was about two inches long and dark brown—definitely not Taako’s then; he had black hair that he bleached blond.

Angus wasn’t sure what use he would have for it, but a good detective kept every piece of evidence, so he found a pair of tweezers and put the hair into a ziploc bag, just in case. The IPRE did have equipment to test DNA, but since they didn’t have access to the sort of data banks that the police had, they wouldn’t be able to match it to a name or face or anything.

After scanning through the book another two times, Angus was still unable to glean any more useful information about the people who had written in it.

He knew their favorite recipes (Barry loved tarts with an unreasonable passion), random details about their pasts (Lup had burned down at least one kitchen), but nothing that indicated where they were now and why Taako couldn’t remember them.

Turning to the internet, Angus searched “Barold J. Bluejeans” along with various versions of that, “Lup”, and “Lup Barry Taako,” but nothing showed up. Other than their writing in the recipe book, Lup and Barry seemed to almost not exist at all.

With a sigh of frustration, Angus decided that this was a case he needed to come back to later. Sometimes leads were dead ends. He just had to hope that sooner or later, something else would show up.

...

Thursdays were Magnus days, so instead of going to the buses after school, Angus headed towards the parking lot. He spotted the familiar red pick-up truck almost immediately and headed straight towards it.

“Hey, Ang!” Magnus said as Angus climbed into the backseat. 

“I’m not the Avatar, sir,” Angus replied automatically.

“What do you want to do today?” Magnus continued, ignoring Angus.

Magnus tried very hard to live up to his self-proclaimed status as the “fun uncle.” Every time Angus spent an afternoon with him, Magnus would suggest some activity to do. These could range from going out for ice cream to playing laser tag to sneaking into Taako’s apartment and setting up a few pranks.

After a bit, these things became less fun and more tiring, at least when done on a weekly basis. If Angus wanted to have a quieter afternoon, like he did today, he had to head Magnus off before he began.

“I’d like to continue learning how to carve ducks, sir!” Angus said. Magnus had started teaching him a few weeks before, and Angus was still quite terrible at it. He wouldn’t be able to improve without practice though, so he jumped at the opportunity to try. Angus just hoped Magnus wasn’t growing frustrated with his slow progress.

“Sure thing!” Magnus said, grinning brightly enough to reassure Angus. “Julia came back from her trip, so maybe she can throw you a few pointers this time.”

“I probably need them,” Angus admitted. “How was her trip?”

Magnus lit up, so obviously happy for the fun adventures his wife had been on that Angus would have thought Magnus had done all these things himself if he didn’t know better.

As Magnus talked, the car turned onto the highway, going right out of the city, past the suburbs, finally turning off when they approached the countryside. There were farms scattered between clumps of trees, cows and grass filling large fenced areas.

As they entered a more heavily wooded area, the car turned off the road onto a gravel path. They rumbled along for another minute before Magnus pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway.

The house Magnus lived in with his wife and her father was one of the most homey places Angus had ever been in. It was old and secluded and never quite fully clean, but this only made it feel more lived in and loved. The floor was always well swept, but there was a trace of dirt that never seemed to fully go away, tracked in by one of the dogs—or maybe one of the people, since this was the only house Angus regularly visited that people never took their shoes off inside.

Wooden carvings of various animals covered every free shelf space, tucked in between old books and pictures in hand-made frames. A few dog toys were frequently scattered across the living room floor, despite the household’s best effort to keep them in the toy box when they weren’t being used.

Almost every time Angus visited, he was greeted by the smell of something delicious cooking, Julia or Steven’s friendly smile, and at least three dogs enthusiastically barking at him. This time was no different.

Grinning, Angus pet the dogs and said his hellos to Steven (Julia had not returned from work yet), before following Magnus to a shed in the back where the family did all their crafting.

Unlike the rest of the IPRE, Magnus had not formally studied any kind of science past high school, going instead to a trade school to learn carpentry. One of his first jobs had been to build some equipment for the IPRE when it was starting to form. He had never left them after that, becoming more and more integrated into the team.

Having seen him work at the lab before, Angus had alway thought that Magnus was a very good scientist, especially for someone who mostly picked it up along the way. Still, seeing him here in his workshop, Magnus was in his element in a way he never was at the lab.

“Alright,” Magnus said, handing Angus a block of wood and a knife. “Let’s see what you remember from last time.”

They spent an hour working together before Steven called them in for a snack. Once they were inside, Steven went to go walk the dogs, leaving Angus and Magnus some space to themselves without much of anything to occupy them. The conchas Steven had made were still cooling on the counter, too hot to pick up yet, much less eat. 

Angus decided to take this opportunity to ask a few questions pertaining to the Mystery of the Missing Memories.

“Sir?” Angus asked.

“What’s up McAngo?”

“I was wondering, has the IPRE ever done any experiments involving memory?” It seemed like the best place to start looking to see if Taako and Lucretia’s memory loss was the result of an experiment gone wrong.

“Oh yeah,” Magnus said. “Lucretia started looking into that stuff last year.”

“Really? Why?” Angus asked. Memories didn’t seem like the kind of thing the IPRE normally worked on, with their main goal being to defeat death. If the memory loss really was the result of an experiment, he would have expected it to be an accidental by-product of something else.

“As people get older, they lose more memories. That wouldn’t be a great perk of living forever, so she wanted to fix that,” Magnus explained, which made more sense. “Honestly I’m surprised it took us almost nine years to go into that though.”

“Has she found anything interesting?” Angus said. Since Lucretia was both one of the people affected and the one who had done the experiment, maybe his theory wasn’t far off.

“Uh, she said something about memories being tied to the soul?” Magnus said, frowning slightly. “Like not just things that you remember but things that other people remember about you. Something about bonds, I think, but she said that most of this has already been hypothesized by other people.”

“That sounds very interesting, sir!” Angus said. He would try to look into that later, even though he was pretty sure a lot of the more scientific language would go over his head. He would probably have to ask Lucretia about it.

The front door opened, and Magnus became instantly distracted by Julia’s arrival.

“You’re back early!” he said, jumping up to hug her.

Julia grinned, her head peeking out above Magnus’s shoulder. “Wow, really? I didn’t realize.”

“Pfft,” Magnus said, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, Angus!” Julia called out, finally pulling away to wave at him.

“Hello, Ms. Burnsides!” Angus replied.

“Oh, hey, the boy wonder wanted a carving lesson from you,” Magnus said, his eyes lighting up as he remembered.

“Well, I’d be happy to offer my assistance,” Julia said. “Just let me put my stuff away.”

“And before carving lessons, maybe join us for these conchas that Ango and I got distracted from eating?” Magnus suggested.

“ _You_ got distracted from dad’s cooking?” Julia laughed.

“Angus is very insistent with his questions!” Magnus protested. Angus couldn’t help but grin at the expression Julia made at that.

Angus did not have the chance to ask any more questions that day, his afternoon filled with more stories of Julia’s trip and enough carving to bring a slight improvement to the quality of his ducks. He didn’t mind though; he could just ask Magnus about Lup and Barry with the rest of the IPRE.

...

Despite having decided that the Case of the Mysterious Boyfriend had a weak foundation and that Angus would not consider it a priority, he found himself unable to fully put it out of his mind. The same curiosity that drove him to be such a persistent detective was now working against the wishes of his brain.

Relying on instincts and feelings alone did not make for good detectiving. However, those types of things could often be the subconscious brain realizing something that the conscious part did not, so Angus didn’t like to completely ignore them. 

If part of him thought there was something to be suspicious about someone, he usually would take it into consideration, even if he wouldn’t act on it without further evidence.

There was some evidence that Kravitz was not all that he appeared to be. None of it was very substantial though, nor was it pointed towards anything really sinister. Angus couldn’t tell how much of his perception was affected by other factors and how much came from genuine cause to think Kravitz was hiding something, but he was pretty sure that something wasn’t quite right.

He needed an outside perspective, so that Friday he called his friend Mavis.

They did not go to the same school, and she was a year older than him, but Angus occasionally stayed over at Merle’s while his children were there. He had quickly become friends with Mavis, and they often talked over the phone or online.

Angus tried to explain the situation as neutrally as possible, though he was sure that he was accidentally biasing her in subtle ways.

“What do you think?” he concluded. “Is Kravitz strange or am I overreacting?”

“Hmm,” Mavis said, her voice slightly distorted over the phone. “I’m not sure that I buy your theory that he’s an immortal, but I would say there is definitely something up with him. Not necessarily a bad thing, but you know. Something.”

“You really think so?” Angus asked, part of him worried that she was just saying it to appease his concerns.

“I’m not saying you should interrogate him or anything, but surely collecting a few more observations wouldn’t hurt?” Mavis suggested. “Maybe there’s a pattern to what he’s hiding that you just aren’t seeing yet.”

“That’s true,” Angus said. Better safe than sorry was a motto they both shared. The more time Angus spent with Kravitz, the less he thought he could be hiding something truly horrendous, but paying attention was never a bad thing.

Angus decided to follow up on some of the discrepancies or weird reactions Kravitz had given, and if none of them lead anywhere, he would give this case up.

Being careful and paying attention wasn’t bad, but it would be too easy to cross the line into paranoia and holding constant suspicion against people he wanted to like. And even though Angus was a detective, he didn’t enjoy being always on the lookout for the worst in people.

Starting with the easier, less stalkery options would be best, Angus figured. So that Friday, Angus paid his landlady a visit.

Carey Fangbattle and her girlfriends Killian and Noelle were some of the coolest adults Angus knew. All three of them worked at the Miller Labs, a famous technology company that produced cutting edge technology. Unlike most people who weren’t the IPRE, they were always supportive of Angus’s detectiving, as long as he didn’t do anything particularly dangerous.

When it grew late enough that Angus felt fairly confident that at least one of them would be back from work, he went over to their apartment on the other side of the building. Carey answered the door, smiling when she saw it was him.

“Angus! How’s it going? Come on in!” Carey said, waving him inside.

“I’m good!” He cast around for the first thing going on in his life that would make for good conversation. “I’ve been learning how to make ducks!”

“Magnus teaching you?” Carey asked.

Angus nodded.

She grinned. “He’s a good teacher, even though I never really got the hang of it.”

“He said you got the back half really down,” Angus offered. “I don’t even have that yet.”

“Then just work on the front half, Angus,” Carey said with a grin. “Between the two of us, we’ll be able to make a full duck!”

Angus laughed. “How are you, ma’am?”

“Fine—well, mostly.” She sighed, her mouth twisting slightly. “Noelle’s been having some trouble at work. Apparently her bosses think she was skipping out half the day for the last few months or something?”

“That’s awful!” Angus said.

“Yeah. They probably just got something mixed up because she would never do that,” Carey said. “But anyway, I heard from Taako that you’re visiting the Miller Labs soon.”

“I am!” Angus said. He was too loyal to the IPRE to think the MIller Laboratories as a wonderful place, but he was very excited to see all the stuff they were currently working on. They had a stronger focus on technology than the IPRE, creating and selling all sorts of super cool inventions. “I’m going there on a field trip this Wednesday!”

“Hey, maybe we’ll see you around!” Carey said. 

“That would be cool!” Angus said, even though he knew it was fairly unlikely. There were a lot of employees at the Miller Laboratories, and his class probably would not be going to the areas where most of the people worked.

“So,” Carey said once it became clear that this line of conversation wasn’t going any further. “What did you come over for?”

“I’m investigating a case, ma’am!” Angus said. “I was hoping I could see the footage from some of the security cameras.”

“Sure, no problem,” Carey said immediately. This was not the first time Angus had asked her for something like this.

“Thank you!” Angus said.

“What case is this for?” Carey asked as she lead him to the computer. “It’s not the missing wallet still, is it?”

“No,” Angus said. “I solved that one a week ago.”

“That’s a relief,” Carey said. “It’d put a dent in your reputation if you let that go unsolved too long.”

“Yeah,” Angus said, even though he wasn’t sure who would keep track of his reputation besides his family and friends. “I don’t know if this is a real case or not yet, but that’s why I need to see the security.”

All he had to do was see that Kravitz had walked to the apartment the night he visited, and it would prove that Angus misinterpreted at least one ‘lie.’ Maybe Kravitz was thrown off when Angus had used his detective skills to prove that Kravitz hadn’t driven there, and his awkwardness had caused Angus to mistake the signals and think he was hiding something.

“Well here you go,” Carey said with one last click of the mouse. “Everything for this week. Don’t take too long with it.”

“I won’t,” Angus promised as she stood up to leave.

He started with the cameras aimed at the street outside the building, finding the time and date that Kravitz would have walked past them. The grainy black and white video showed the usual traffic of cars passing by and people coming back from work, but no Kravitz. Angus kept watching the footage until it went well past the time he knew Kravitz had been inside their apartment.

With a frown Angus checked the time and date of the video again to make sure it was correct, then rewound the feed further back. Maybe Kravitz had showed up very early and waited outside their door for a while.

Finding still no sign of Kravitz, Angus went further and further back until it was far enough back that he saw himself and Taako return.

Which didn’t make any sense. The apartment building was surrounded by a gate that made it very difficult to get in through any other way than the front entrance. If Kravitz hadn’t come in through the front, how else could he have arrived at the apartment?

When in doubt, it was always a good idea to start from the end and work backwards. Angus knew for a fact that Kravitz had been on their front doorstep at around 7:05. Maybe watching that video would lead to something he could work off of. 

Angus selected the footage from the camera that was right outside the door to Taako and his apartment. He fast-forwarded through the footage to the right time, overshooting the time that Kravitz had come in.

At a slower pace, Angus went a bit further backwards in the video, and yep, there was Kravitz stepping into the apartment. 

He certainly wasn’t a vampire or anything that couldn’t show up on camera (not that vampires actually existed). Whatever reason he hadn’t shown up on the other camera had a more rational explanation.

Skipping back to about a minute before that, Angus let the video play at its regular speed.

First, there was only the empty area in front of the apartment, its familiar details strange and warped when seen from this angle through the low quality feed. A sudden movement caught his eye, a small white thing appearing out of nowhere, slicing a vertical line down in the air.

Completely entranced, Angus watched as the white thing curved to the right before going back up. The path the object took remained outlined in a bright white, a stark contrast to the darker scenery behind it. The space inbetween the lines was some strange gray thing that Angus couldn’t quite see clearly through the security video. It definitely wasn’t the floor and wall that had been there a moment before.

In the gray space, Angus could see the legs of someone, and as the white thing went higher, he could see a hip, a torso, and a pair of skeletal hands that were gripping a stick. The stick was connected to the white thing that Angus now realized was actually the blade of a scythe.

The blade curved over the skull of the person standing in that strange gray space, ending back where it had started.

All this had taken about two seconds, but to Angus who was having his world view slightly upturned, it felt like an eternity. A portal was one thing, and while very unusual for casual transportation, it was not impossible. But Angus had never heard of a walking skeleton, much less—judging by the scythe—the Grim Reaper. Such things had, until this point, been nothing more than myth.

The suited skeleton stepped through the portal, and as it did so, skin grew over the hands and head, the face now recognizably belonging to Kravitz.

It should have been an obvious conclusion, given that Angus knew Kravitz would be in that very location a few seconds later, but he still gasped when he saw who the skeleton man really was. In all fairness, he had only had a few seconds to process this complete readjustment of his life.

Kravitz moved as if to tuck the scythe into his belt or pocket or something, and it disappeared, the portal following suit. A moment later, he knocked on the door, and Angus saw his past self open it.

Angus paused the video, went back a minute, and watched it all over again, just to make sure that it hadn’t been a hallucination or anything.

First things first, Angus decided. He had to approach this from a logical angle. He had to ignore the odd lump in his throat, the strange rushing sensation in his head, the panic that told him nothing in the world made sense anymore, the erratic beating of his heart. 

At the moment, he had a thousand questions, but if he just thought this through logically, he would be able to grasp a couple answers. He just had to breathe and focus.

These were his conclusions:

  1. Kravitz was not the normal human being he seemed to be. He had powerful magic (as evidenced by the portal) and his aesthetic fit the depiction of the grim reaper of myths, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
  2. Angus should revisit his immortality theory.
  3. It was very unlikely that Taako knew anything about this. Angus didn’t think Taako would keep something so big from him, nor would Kravitz make such an effort to keep this a secret from Angus if Taako knew.
  4. ... Angus couldn’t think of any other conclusions he could draw from this at the moment, but that was okay. He could come back to this, look over his notes and piece other parts together.



He wondered if he had been wrong about Kravitz being a nice person. What if he was there to hurt them?

Assuming that Kravitz was in some way connected to death, that was hardly a positive sign for Angus and Taako’s continued existence. On the other hand, legends did not often depict symbols of death dating scientists, so Angus wasn’t sure how much he should consider those stories.

There was a bias on Angus’s part because he  _ wanted  _ Kravitz to be a good person. Kravitz was always polite to Angus, never condescending or dismissive like so many other adults could be, and he genuinely made Taako happy. Kravitz liked mysteries and had started reading the Caleb Cleveland series, and his stories were always very good.

Angus really liked Kravitz, and that made him far more willing to believe any positive signs there might be. He couldn’t get rid of that bias, but he would have to factor that in before making any decisions.

Part of him couldn’t process this fact. Kravitz seemed like a good person. But he had also seemed like a regular human, and that clearly wasn’t true. Angus didn’t know what to think of him anymore, whether he should trust his highest hopes or his worst fears. He didn’t know what to do.

The big decision Angus had to make was what to do with all this information. 

Generally when a detective reached a conclusion, they went to the authorities and had the bad guy arrested. Since (as far as Angus knew) Kravitz had not committed any crimes or done anything worse than keep a secret, he couldn’t exactly be considered the antagonist to the usual crime story.

In this case, the authorities would be different; instead of the police, there was Taako. 

Objectively, Angus believed that secrets were a bad basis for a relationship, and those grounds alone would be plenty reason to show this security footage to Taako. But there were other factors to consider. Telling Taako might put him in danger, and besides, Angus was missing many facts. He didn’t want to go rushing in with all the wrong impressions and make everything worse.

On the other hand, Angus was not very good at keeping secrets, and he didn’t like to lie to people he cared about. No matter what he did, he wouldn’t be able to keep this to himself for long. Which was a decision in and of itself, Angus realized.

He would give himself the weekend to think this over and collect as much facts as he could in order to avoid making a rash decision, but if nothing new showed up by then, he would have to tell Taako.

Angus only hoped that it wouldn’t be too late by then.

...

After saying goodbye to Carey and returning home, Angus went directly to his room. He knew that spending time around Taako would be awkward and uncomfortable and tempt him to change his mind.

He wasn’t able to avoid Taako completely though, and Angus had to come out for dinner. Every moment of the meal, Angus had to fight the urge to tell Taako the secret he had every right to know. Running through the reasons he wasn’t saying anything yet helped, but only barely. Angus didn’t know if he was making the right choice. Both options seemed to have a high chance of leading to ruin.

Conflicts that came from lack of proper communication were some of Angus’s least favorite, both in real life and in fiction, and he would hate to be the cause of one now. At least there were only a couple days remaining until he could spill this secret, Angus reminded himself. Barely two more days.

...

The next morning was far easier.

Waking up that Saturday, a little past when his alarm usually went off, to soft sunlight was possibly the most peace Angus had felt that whole week. His worries seemed distant and untroublesome.

The mention of Lup and Barry had upset Taako and Lucretia, but both recovered quickly from the incident, as if it had never happened. The memory loss thing had likely been going on for some time without noticeable harm, so this mystery was not urgent, and could be uncovered at a reasonable place.

The Kravitz business was a bit more pressing, but after a long night of sleep, the unreality of the situation was not combining well into Angus’s perception of the world. 

Logically, he knew that something concerning must be going on, but it felt impossible to be afraid of the grim reaper when Angus was waking up in his own bed, like he had so many weekends before. This new information should have significantly impacted his life. Instead, everything was going on as usual, and that made it feel less real.

But now was not the time for either of those cases, and he had something else to occupy his mind.

Angus got dressed, ate breakfast, and went to the IPRE lab with Taako, as he had planned a few days before. It was time to focus on his third case, that of the missing data. 

Taako had not been particularly pleased that Angus was getting himself involved in the same top secret case Kravitz was on. The only reason he was allowing this at all was because Angus had argued that they didn’t  _ know _ the IPRE break in was connected to Kravitz’s case at all.

Still, Angus had to promise only to follow up the leads within the lab and leave everything else up to Kravitz. This meant that the information Angus could seek out was rather limited, but it was still something.

The major questions Angus could solve were of what data was stolen and which part of the lab had been destroyed.

Since none of the people working there could remember either of those (Angus had asked), the next logical place to look was the records they kept. He spent his morning in the office of the lab, trying to piece together the timeline for who had been working on what and when.

It was a slow process, since Angus had to build his timeline from inferences based off of words and concepts he didn’t always understand, even with the help of the internet. A few hours of work paid off however, and Angus had accounted for all the time between the IPRE’s start and the break in.

During the time period in question, each member of the IPRE had been working constantly on one project or another, and Angus could find lots of proof to back all of it up. There were no experiments done with data missing, as far as Angus could tell. Everything seemed to be accounted for. If Angus didn’t know better, he would have said nothing had been stolen at all.

But it was entirely possible for a person to work on multiple things at the same time, or for the information thief to switch up the records to cover their tracks, so Angus had to cross-reference everything with every IPRE member.

His afternoon was spent interviewing each of the IPRE on all the things they had been working on in the years before the break in.

For the most part, their stories lined up with the timeline Angus had constructed based on the records. There were no missing gaps of time or forgotten research topics beyond what could easily be explained by the natural degradation of memory.

But there was one major discrepancy that kept showing up. Especially in the earlier years, people misremembered who had been working with them on certain things. That lead to many conversations along the same lines as this:

“What did you work on after that?” Angus asked.

“I worked with Davenport on trying to slow down time around a specific cell,” Magnus replied promptly. “It didn’t even come close to working, but it was a lot of fun.”

‘Fun’ was not a word often used to describe working with the more serious-minded Davenport, but Angus set that detail aside. Maybe Magnus was talking about the work itself, and it was hardly the biggest problem with that statement.

“Are you sure it was Davenport working with you, sir?” Angus asked. “Because the records show that he was on the verge of a breakthrough on an experiment with Lucretia at the time. He wasn’t doing anything else at the time.” Both Lucretia and Davenport had confirmed that, so Angus was inclined to believe them over Magnus.

Magnus frowned. “I—I think it was Davenport? No, now that you mention it, it seems like it must have been someone else, but I can’t think who. But who else could it be?”

Angus shrugged, not having any good answer. The other two members of the IPRE had been busy then too.

A similar conversation had happened five other times. Just the one mix-up would have been something easy to ignore, but when it happened so many times, it had to be significant. Angus knew this was an important clue, but he didn’t know what it meant.

During the interviews, Angus had also asked the other three IPRE members about Lup and Barry. All of them had given strange responses, though none were quite as strong as Taako’s had been.

“Have you ever heard the names Lup and Barry Bluejeans, sir?” Angus asked Davenport at the end of his interview.

Davenport had stared off into the distance for the longest moment, frowning slightly. “I—” He cut himself off, and Angus could almost swear Davenport was choking up. “No?”

“Not even in passing or anything?” Angus tried.

“No,” Davenport said, but he didn’t sound very confident about it. After that, he went a bit quiet, responding to Angus’s questions in as few words as possible.

Magnus’s interview hadn’t gone much better.

“Do you know who Barry Bluejeans and Lup are?” Angus asked, this time at the beginning, just to switch things up.

“Nope, never heard of them,” Magnus said, and Angus would have thought that he was the only IPRE member unaffected by the mention of their names, except for the tear that had started trickling down his cheek.

“Are you sure?” Angus asked.

“Pretty sure,” Magnus said. His eyebrows crinkled together, and he dabbed at his eye with the sleeve of his shirt. “Huh.”

“Are you okay?” Angus asked, setting down his pen and journal that he had been jotting notes and observations down in. Investigations were important, but not more so than the well-being of his family.

“Yeah, but...” Magnus swallowed. “I think Merle must have messed up on some spell or something because I feel really sad now.” He tried to laugh, but it came out awkward and stilted.

When Angus posed the question to Merle, he had raised an eyebrow. “Why? Are they suspects?”

“Do you think they are?” Angus asked carefully.

“Nah. I don’t know ‘em, but they sound like good kids. Nobody with the name ‘Bluejeans’ could be too evil, you know?” Merle smiled softly. “Maybe a bit annoying, with wild ideas and funny jokes, but not a thief. And Lup, she seems pretty fun too.”

Angus had never said Lup’s pronouns, which was not a particularly gendered name, but Merle had still known. It supported his theory that the IPRE had all known Barry and Lup and forgotten them, but it had given him little other information.

...

At the end of the day, Angus rode home with Taako, staring out beyond the window, as if it could give him all the answers. It was easy to get lost in the rushing lights and steady darkness of the passing world, until all that was left was sharp but fleeting thoughts.

He wasn’t sure how helpful his visit to the IPRE lab had been. He hadn’t been able to find any blueprints or anything that might indicate which rooms in the lab were destroyed. He hadn’t been able to find any leftover trace of whatever research had been taken.

All he seemed to have confirmed was that none of the five members had worked on whatever had been stolen. Which might explain why none of them could remember what had been stolen, but then how had the IPRE gotten the information in the first place?

Nobody in the IPRE had their research stolen.

The thought echoed in his head, tugging at the seed of an idea to something, some faint uncertain notion that wasn’t quite ready to form yet.

Nobody in the IPRE had their research stolen.

Maybe Angus was looking at this from the wrong angle. Why was everyone so certain something had been stolen at all? The computer history had shown that something big was deleted, but surely that could have been faked? The IPRE all said they  _ knew  _ that something important was missing, but it had been five years and their memories regarding this case were already so messed up. But then the question was why someone would go through all that effort if nothing had even been taken.

Nobody in the IPRE had their research stolen.

But the missing information wasn’t the only thing that the IPRE had forgotten about, was it? Despite certain signs hinting that the IPRE had been close to Lup and Barry, all of them claimed not to know the two at all.

Nobody in the IPRE had their research stolen.

So what if the research hadn’t been done by the current five members of the IPRE? Barry was clearly knowledgeable in science, as Angus had seen from his doodles, and hadn’t Lucretia mentioned needing two other people for the IPRE to function smoothly? Every single one of the IPRE had known and forgotten Lup and Barry, so it wasn’t that big of a stretch.

What if Lup and Barry had worked with the IPRE, and it was  _ their _ research, along with their presence on Earth, that had been stolen? It was a wild theory, but no stranger than Kravitz being the grim reaper. The case was already weird enough, so why not accept this as a possibility?

Angus would have to look over his notes again to see which details and clues fit with this idea and if any of them didn’t. And maybe he should think this through again sometime when he wasn’t already half asleep. It would have to be a question for tomorrow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Angus gains an ally and gets himself into a bit of trouble.

The next morning, Angus was woken by a gentle shake of his shoulder.

“Mrmph?” he muttered blearily, clumsily trying to piece together his situation from the blurry haze that surrounded him.

“It’s all good, Ango,” came Taako’s voice from somewhere above him. “That bastard Davenport woke me up with some ‘great idea’ or whatever, so I gotta go to the lab today. Thought I’d let you know, but you can go back to sleep.”

“Hng,” Angus said and did just that.

When he woke up again a couple hours later, half the morning had passed, and he assumed that the vague impression of a memory left in his mind was from a dream. He left his room to go find some breakfast, expecting Taako to already be in the kitchen.

Instead, he found a note on the counter, informing him that Taako had to gone work, but that Kravitz would be coming around in a few hours.

Angus froze, snapping into wakefulness with a start.

Taako was a fairly relaxed guardian who gave Angus a lot of free reign. He generally trusted Angus to know what was safe and what wasn’t. However, he also believed that it would be bad parenting to let a child go a full day without at least some supervision.

On the days that Angus didn’t have school but Taako had work, Taako found someone to spend some time with Angus for a few hours. This could be Carey, Killian, Noelle, one of the IPRE who wasn’t working, or Taako’s friend Ren. Sometimes, Taako just sent Angus to play with one of his friends. Apparently this time, the adult in question was Kravitz.

Angus swallowed back the strange lump of fear in his throat.

He was not in the habit of judging someone based off of what they were. Why shouldn’t that approach extend to someone’s status as a very powerful magic user who may or may not be the Grim Reaper? And so what if Kravitz _was_ the Grim Reaper? He had done nothing to indicate that he was after Taako or Angus’s soul, and even if he was, it would be pointless to try and fight off Death itself.

Except... wasn’t that what the IPRE was trying to do? What if Kravitz was here to see if the IPRE had gotten too close to finding the secret to immortality with whatever data had been stolen? Angus’s family could be in trouble from authorities they hadn’t even known existed.

But Kravitz had teleportation magic, so he would hardly need to date Taako in order to access information or anything else he might want, especially because Taako clearly knew nothing. So Kravitz was probably genuinely interested in dating Taako, not killing him or anyone close to him.

And anyway, what were Angus’s other options? He could call Taako and tell him about the security footage, but Angus had already decided not to do that until the next day.

Angus had wanted to use this weekend to understand the Kravitz situation more in order to decide what to tell Taako. What better way was there to collect information than to talk to Kravitz himself?

Besides, Kravitz knew more about the whole missing data business than Angus did. There had to be a reason he was working on the case that led him to meet Taako, and Angus wanted to know why. If there was any way to find out more about that, Angus would take it.

As a detective, his decision was already made. Angus was going to let Kravitz come over, and try to learn as much as he could.

This conclusion, even with all the good reasoning behind it, did not stop his insides from feeling like a giant hand had been plunged into his abdomen and was squeezing all his guts together.

Angus was unable to think of anything else all morning. He tried to focus on a book he had started reading, Foxglove Summer. It wasn’t a Caleb Cleveland novel, but under normal circumstances, he would have been completely wrapped up in it. Today, even an exciting mystery could not distract him from the nagging thoughts that spun around his brain, wondering if he really was making the right decision.

It didn’t take long for him to give up on reading. He spent the rest of the time before Kravitz came hiding notes and secret clues that would indicate what had likely happened to him if he wound up missing or dead.

A large part of him thought his actions were almost comically paranoid. Even after seeing that Kravitz was more than he seemed, Angus could not fully accept that there was a chance that Kravitz was bad or dangerous in some way.

This lack of genuine fear worried Angus, so he planned for the absolute worst, as if to make up for that.

The doorbell rang at precisely 11:00, causing Angus to jump and drop the pen he was holding. His heart thudded into action as he scribbled out the last couple words. With shaking fingers, he managed to tape the note to the underside of the table and stow away the tape back into its drawer.

Finally, Angus rushed to the entrance hall, hoping that Kravitz wouldn’t find the wait too suspiciously long.

“Hello, sir!” Angus said brightly as he opened the door. He wondered if Kravitz had arrived through a portal this time as well.

“Hi, Angus,” Kravitz said. He was fiddling with the hem of his suit jacket with one hand as he hesitated on the front doorstep. Angus could tell that Kravitz was nervous, currently being well acquainted with the feeling himself. After another awkward moment of silence, Kravitz finally stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Um,” Angus said, not entirely sure what he should say to this adult who was supposed to be looking after him but might want the death of him or the people he cared about.

“Taako asked me to come, and... Do you—do you need me for anything, or...?” Kravitz asked, looking around him, as if hoping for some kind of cue for what he should do next. “Like, uh, lunch? Is it too early for that?”

“I don't really need anything, sir!” Angus said, his words tumbling out slightly faster than normal. “I think Taako just doesn’t want me to feel neglected.”

From what Angus knew, Taako had gone through a pretty lonely childhood. It was the best explanation Angus had for why Taako didn’t want to leave him alone for too long. After all, Angus had proven himself to be quite capable of taking care of himself, even when he was much younger.

Kravitz nodded quickly. “Sounds like a good thing to consider.”

They were quiet for a long moment, both staring at each other then looking away before it got even more uncomfortable than it already was.

Angus found it difficult to be quite as afraid of Kravitz, with the man right in front of him. He already knew Kravitz as a person. Kravitz might be a bit awkward, but he was definitely human-like and normal enough. This kind of thinking, of course, was the folly of many victims of crimes, but Angus’s emotions easily fell prey to things his brain did not.

“Would you like something to eat or drink, sir?” Angus asked because politeness had been drilled into his head by his grandfather. He couldn’t ignore it, even in tense situations like this.

“No, thank you,” Kravitz said. “I, uh, I already had lunch.”

There was another stretch of silence. Angus wondered if Kravitz actually needed to eat.

“Why did you volunteer for this?” Angus asked, feeling a bit impatient with this stilted exchange. His questioning of Kravitz had to start somewhere. “You don’t seem to have much experience with kids.”

“That obvious, huh?” Kravitz asked, one hand coming up to scratch his ear sheepishly.

“Well, you do seem a bit lost on what to do,” Angus pointed out. Though to be fair, in this instance, the responsibility of the awkward atmosphere did not fall fully onto Kravitz.

“Yeah, I don’t know many kids, or people who have them. And it’s been a while since I was your age,” Kravitz admitted. “But Taako sounded like he needed help, so why wouldn’t I offer?”

“I’m sure he appreciates it, sir,” Angus said. He wasn’t sure what to make of that answer, other than it was probably the truth and probably a sign that Kravitz truly cared about Taako. The ‘probablys’ made the observation less than helpful though.

“So... uh, what are you working on now?” Kravitz asked. “Any cases?”

“A few,” Angus said vaguely. He wasn’t sure how else he could answer that question without going down a path there was no turning back from. “I know you can’t tell me much, but are you still working on the same investigation that you met Taako on?”

“I’ve been doing some other things on the side, since there haven’t been any new leads recently,” Kravitz said. “But yes, I’m still working on it.”

Angus hesitated, carefully considering all the options in his head. He had a new lead on the case Kravitz was working on, even though he wasn’t sure how helpful it would be or even whether or not Kravitz already knew it. And then, of course, there was the biggest problem: he didn’t know if he could trust Kravitz with it.

“Maybe if you tell me a bit about it, I could help,” Angus suggested, even though he already knew what the answer would be.

As expected, Kravitz shook his head, smiling slightly. “I really appreciate your support, but I can’t.”

“Okay, sir,” Angus said, trying not to sound disappointed. He would have to try to find out why Kravitz was on this case and what his motivations were some other way.

The only way Angus could think of that might actually work was a direct question. Such confrontations with suspects were considered risky, but for all Angus knew, he had a limited window of time to figure this out before something bad happened, and he was out of quick options.

“When were you born?” Angus blurted, finding it suddenly difficult to swallow.

“Huh?” Kravitz’s eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Uh... a little before Taako. Nineteen eighty—”

“I’m sorry, I meant when were you _really_ born?” Angus asked.

“What...?” Kravitz’s ever-present half smile dropped.

Angus had started this, now he had to see it through. He took a deep breath and put on a condescending tone. “What was the year you were actually born in that isn’t a lie?”

“Nineteen—” Kravitz started, but Angus didn’t let him get very far.

“I have very high insight, sir! You shouldn’t try to lie to me.”

“You can’t possibly know...” Kravitz said almost to himself, but his eyes darted to the door for a brief instant.

Part of Angus wanted to run into his room and hide from awkward conversations and possible Grim Reapers, but that wouldn’t give him the answers he wanted. He stood his ground instead and selected a couple relevant pieces of evidence for his immortal Kravitz theory.

“I can’t possibly know what? That the town you grew up burned down a hundred years ago and hasn’t been rebuilt since? That you cut a portal onto our front door step and walked out as a skeleton?”

“How—”

“You aren’t a very good liar, sir!”

Kravitz laughed nervously, taking a small almost unconscious step backwards. “Taako doesn’t call you the world’s greatest detective for nothing then. What—what do you—what are you going to do?”

Kravitz’s reactions seemed more defensive than aggressive, Angus noticed through the fog of panicked exhilaration choking his mind. That was a reassurance, even it it was a small one.

As steadily and firmly as he could, Angus said, “That depends, sir. I have some questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

Kravitz stared at him for a moment, before letting out a helpless snort. “Why not? I might as well make sure you don’t have the wrong impression.”

This did not seem like a conversation suited for standing in the entryway, so Angus lead them to the table to talk. It seemed less casual than the couch.

While Kravitz was busy adjusting his chair, Angus quietly whispered the words to the Zone of Truth, just like Merle had taught him. Then he started with the most important question. “Are you here to hurt Taako in any way?”

“No!” Kravitz said immediately, looking horrified at the thought. “Other than our first meeting, which you already know all about, Taako has nothing to do with my job. And I have no intentions of breaking his heart or anything either.”

“Alright,” Angus said. Even if the spell didn’t affect Kravitz the same way it did living humans, Angus had no doubt that he was being sincere. Kravitz wasn’t that great of an actor. With Angus’s biggest worry out of the way, it felt like a giant weight had been eased off his chest. “So what exactly is your job? Are you the Grim Reaper?”

Kravitz made a face. “I wouldn’t say I’m _the_ Grim Reaper, but I am one of the reapers. I hunt bounties for the goddess of death, persecuting anyone who breaks her laws.”

It didn’t seem too far off from some of Angus’s theories, but somehow, hearing it spoken outright seemed wild and new. Angus’s mind filled up with something that was less like a stream of questions and more like a general overpowering sense of confusion.

“What exactly does that mean, sir?” he asked.

“Well...” Kravitz paused to think it through. “I chase down any souls that escape from the underworld and put them in the Eternal Stockade—ghost jail, I suppose you’d call it. Or if someone uses vile magics to extend their life indefinitely or does anything else to break the laws of life and death, I would put a stop to it.”

Angus frowned, his insides clenching abruptly. “Then why aren’t you going after the IPRE?”

“What, because they want to extend life too?” Kravitz asked, his eyebrows inching closer together.

Angus nodded.

“Oh, well that’s different,” Kravitz said immediately, his face relaxing. He must have noticed Angus’s dissatisfaction with that short answer though, because he added, “It’s—what they’re doing is more natural I suppose? Like I wouldn’t hunt someone down because they took some medicine that saved their life, or if someone’s heart stopped beating but CPR brought them back. What the IPRE is trying to do is just an extension of that.”

That made a kind of sense, but Angus still didn’t entirely understand it. “What exactly is the distinction then? The IPRE do use magic too, not just science.”

“It’s not whether it’s magic or science that’s being used,” Kravitz said. He sighed. “The difference is difficult to explain, and probably a bit arbitrary, but it’s there.”

Not wanting to annoy Kravitz into ending the conversation, Angus decided to move on to the next topic. “What are you exactly? I mean most people don’t turn into skeletons that walk around.”

“I suppose...” Kravitz started. “I suppose the best description would be sanctioned undead. I lived a human life then died. Now I serve the Raven Queen and have certain powers to aid me in my duties.”

Angus already knew Kravitz couldn’t be a normal human, but this seemed like a pretty big deal to lie about. “Did you plan on keeping this all a secret from Taako forever?”

“Not forever,” Kravitz said. He looked down, but it seemed more in shame than to cover a lie. “I’m sorry I lied to you, but you have to understand, I can’t tell every passerby about my job. I’ve only known Taako for three weeks. I figured that if I waited a month, that would be enough time to make sure I could trust him. So I was going to tell him—tell both of you. Soon.”

“Okay,” Angus said. He could see why it might be better for the general existence of reapers, much less the identity of a particular one, to not be advertised. Even if he did disapprove of building relationships on top of secrets. “And you still plan on telling him?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Kravitz said. “I—I really like Taako, and I don’t want to lie to him. I’m not sure anymore that I’ll even wait the whole month.”

“Good,” Angus said, and there was that problem solved. If Kravitz was planning on telling Taako, Angus didn’t have to worry too much about that. “But you aren’t really good at hiding it. Even without seeing footage of you cutting a portal to our front doorstep, I almost figured you out.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, he couldn’t help but grin, proud of his own accomplishment. Reapers were believed to be complete myth by almost everyone, so it was no small thing that Angus had realized they existed so quickly after meeting one.

Kravitz shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t normally talk to people who don’t already know I’m a reaper.”

That made sense, and it made Angus wonder exactly how much Kravitz had lied to make himself seem like a normal human and how much was just playing along with expectations. Which brought up another question. “So now that I know you’re a reaper, are your investigations still classified?”

Kravitz snorted. “You really don’t give up, do you.”

“Persistence is what separates a good detective from a bad one!” Angus said brightly. “That’s what Caleb Cleveland always says.”

“Well... I probably shouldn’t give the details on some of my cases,” Kravitz said. “But I did mostly say they were classified to keep my secret.”

“Then could you tell me about the one you met Taako on?” Angus asked. “Because I think I might have useful information, but I don’t know if you already know it, or how it might tie into the rest of the case.”

Kravitz looked alarmed, his eyes wide and words bursting to escape his mouth. “You have what?! How? This is a dangerous investigation! It’s not safe to go running around and—”

“I was very careful, sir!” Angus promised. “And I didn’t do anything other than go to the IPRE lab and talk to the people who work there.”

“Okay,” Kravitz said, his panic dying down. He looked Angus carefully in the eye. “It’s still not safe. You don’t have the experience, magic, or back up that I have. Can you promise to stop looking into this?”

“I won’t go anywhere to look for more clues on this case,” Angus said, choosing his words carefully. “But only if you tell me everything you know about it. Even without seeking out more clues, I might notice something you don’t, sir.”

“Fine,” Kravitz said. “But you _have to_ hold your end of the deal.”

“Okay,” Angus agreed.

“So there’s a lot of pieces to this,” Kravitz began. “I’m not sure where to start—I only investigated the IPRE because they shared some similarities to something else I was originally looking into.”

“What happened that first drew your attention to this whole thing?” Angus asked. The circumstances must have been unusual; he doubted that reapers were often involved in everyday lab burglaries.

“Well, you know the Miller Laboratories, right?” Kravitz asked.

“Yeah!” Angus said. “I’m going on a field trip to see it in a couple of days!”

“They’ve been working on AI research,” Kravitz said. “Which wouldn’t normally fall into my domain, but the Raven Queen caught word of experiments on downloading the human conscious onto a computer to save them from death.”

“And this falls into your jurisdiction?” Angus asked. The vague line Kravitz had drawn between what was acceptable to reapers and what wasn’t had just grown blurrier.

“Actually we weren’t sure if it did or not—that was what I was sent to investigate,” Kravitz explained. “But there was a problem. Soon after I started looking into it, the Miller Labs were broken into, and all of their research in that area disappeared, including a few of the scientists working on it.”

Angus’s eyes widened. This was a familiar story. No wonder Kravitz had investigated the IPRE. It was strange though that Angus hadn’t heard anything about the Miller Lab break in on the news or anything. Perhaps the Millers had wanted to keep it quiet for the sake of publicity. That wasn’t too uncommon.

“A couple days later, some people died—the exact number as the number of scientists who disappeared, in fact—but their souls didn’t show up in the Astral Plane,” Kravitz continued.

“You think the person who stole the research was trying to test it out and succeeded?” Angus asked. It was the explanation that made the most sense.

“I have my suspicious, but there’s no proof,” Kravitz said. “I started looking into past cases, trying to see if anything like this had ever been done before. The break in was too clean for it to be the first time this person had done something like it.”

“And you found the IPRE case,” Angus concluded.

Kravitz nodded. “The IPRE one was also too neatly done to be the first attempt, but even if the criminal was sloppier with that incident, the five years that have passed have washed away anything that might have been left behind.”

Time could often be inconvenient like that, but Angus still found himself frustrated. If only they had known enough to look into it soon after it happened.

“The IPRE thing was probably my business too, not that I knew that back when it happened,” Kravitz said. “I looked through our records, and a couple people’s bodies died without their souls turning up soon after that break in as well. The only difference is that no researchers were taken from the IPRE, so maybe the thieves kidnapped some other random people.”

“Oh!” Angus said. A couple people’s souls were missing. A couple people had been forgotten by the IPRE. His theory seemed even less like a leap than before. “I actually think I know the answer to that, sir!”

Kravitz blinked. “You do?”

“The thing is,” Angus began, “I’ve been looking through the IPRE records to see if I could find something the burglar missed. From what I could tell, none of the five current members of the IPRE would have had the time to work on whatever was stolen because they were all too busy working on stuff that is still in their database.

“Okay?” Kravitz was frowning slightly. “Did someone quit or...?”

“Not according to the records, sir!” Angus said. He was excited to finally be able to share his theories to someone else, to see if any of them made sense. He couldn’t help but let the conversation drag on just a bit to build up the suspense.

“Then what do you mean?” Kravitz asked.

“I was working on a different case, and I am fairly certain that there are two people named Lup and Barry Bluejeans that were at one point close to all of the IPRE, but have been forgotten. In an unnatural way, I mean,” Angus clarified. “I think they used to work for the IPRE and did the research that was stolen.”

“Why do you think that they worked on the stolen research?” Kravitz asked. “The IPRE mostly share a social circle—they might have just been friends, not coworkers as well.”

“Barry knew a lot about science, and since the IPRE forgot so much about both them and the case, I thought they might be connected...” It sounded like an even flimsier connection, now that he said it out loud. “Or maybe not! It’s just a possibility.”

“I’ve seen more far-fetched explanations than that,” Kravitz said. “But the problem is, I remember the people who went missing from the Miller Labs, and so did all the people I talked to about it.”

That was a fair objection. The only reason someone would want to wipe the memory of the existence of the victims to a crime was to cover their tracks. If that was the case, why would the criminal only do that for an earlier crime?

“Maybe the cases are unrelated,” Angus said. Or maybe they were missing something. Either way, this needed more consideration. “I’ll keep thinking about it, sir!”

“As long as you don’t do more than think about it,” Kravitz reminded him.

“I did promise, sir,” Angus said. And maybe it came out a bit reproachful, but Angus was not in the habit of forgetting his promises.

“Wait, you do know some magic, don’t you?” Kravitz asked suddenly, straightening slightly as if an idea had struck him.

“Uh, yeah,” Angus said, thrown off by the sudden change in topic. “Taako’s been teaching me.” He was far from mastering it, but he did know a fair amount of spells.

“Do you know any that could create a fire?”

There were a quite a few fire spells that existed, so one of the first things he had learned was how to create fire. “I know Produce Flame. Why?”

Kravitz reached into his pocket, pulling out a long black feather which he handed to Angus. “You said you wouldn’t investigate this case anymore—and I believe you!—but just in case it’s too late and you already caught someone’s attention, I thought it would be prudent to have a safety net. And it doesn’t have to be related to this, it could be some other case, or a police officer giving you a particularly suspicious look, or anything.”

Angus took the feather, examining it closely. As far as he could see, it was an ordinary feather—probably a raven’s, given the circumstance—but he was sure that if he cast Detect Magic, the results would show otherwise. “What is this, exactly?”

“Something to send a message to me, if you’re ever in serious trouble,” Kravitz replied.

“And I need to burn it?” Angus asked. Given Kravitz’s earlier question, it was a reasonable assumption, but he liked to be sure.

“Yes. It doesn’t have to be a magical fire, but in most situations, magic would be the easiest way to do it,” Kravitz explained.

Even putting aside this case, detective work could have its dangers, so Angus certainly was not going to turn away this offer. He did have a phone, but this seemed like more of a direct line, or at least Kravitz would know instantly that it was an emergency if Angus used it.

“Thank you very much, sir!” Angus said, tucking the feather into a secure pocket, one that he could button closed. “I’ll keep this on me at all times.”

“Good,” Kravitz said, finally relaxing the rest of the way back to his normal posture. Angus hadn’t even realized that Kravitz had been tensed for the whole conversation until he wasn’t. “I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”

“But it wouldn’t be as bad for you, would it?” Angus said cheekily. “You would still be able to see me in the Astral Plane.”

Kravitz gave him a sharp look that said this was no joking matter. Angus quickly dropped his grin.

“Why don’t you tell me about how you came to the conclusion that Lup and Barry might have worked for the IPRE?” Kravitz suggested, and Angus complied.

It was nice being able to have a second opinion on all this, but the two of them weren’t able to come up with any new connections or theories. Kravitz had never seen such a powerful memory spell before, though as Angus pointed out, if the spell was really good, there might not be any evidence that it had ever been cast.

Eventually, Angus went off to do all the homework he had been neglecting over the past couple of days. When Kravitz wasn’t paying attention, Angus took all the secret notes and clues he had hidden around the apartment and threw them away.

Later that evening, they had another conversation about mysteries, but this time it was the fictional sort. Kravitz had read the first Caleb Cleveland novel, and Angus wanted to know all of his thoughts about it.

Taako came home after a few hours, and after some dinner, Kravitz left to go home. Angus wanted to know if Kravitz lived in the afterlife, but he didn’t have the chance to ask. There would probably be other opportunities, Angus figured.

After everything Angus had learned over the weekend, the end of the day was rather anticlimactic. He finished a letter to his pen pal, Jimmy, then went to bed. Without learning more about the secrets of life and death or the people who had vanished from the minds of all his friends, the evening felt unnaturally quiet and empty.

The usual Sunday night feeling of missing something important was even stronger than usual, and Angus went to bed impatient for the next day to come.

...

Monday passed without any new developments in either of the two cases—or possibly the one combined case, depending on whether Angus’s theory was right or not. He spent hours online and even visited the library, but almost everything on ending memory-erasing spells either claimed it was impossible or offered long, complex rituals that required expensive ingredients.

He asked Lucretia about it when he went to her house on Tuesday, but she didn’t have anything too helpful either.

“It honestly depends on how the memory was taken,” Lucretia said. “If the memory was merely tucked out of sight, it could be recovered. If it was completely erased, it can't.”

“Is erasing memories completely hard?” Angus asked. He knew that causing permanent change generally took more skill in magic than temporary change. If he was lucky, it would be so difficult to completely erase an entire person that it was practically impossible, and Lup and Barry would be able to be remembered by their friends and family once Angus got them back.

“It’s pretty difficult,” Lucretia said. “There’s been known cases of erasing something small like a specific event, but if the spell was powerful enough, a person’s mind could theoretically be wiped clean.”

Angus tried very hard not to let the twist of fear in his chest show on his face. “Bonds have something to do with memory too right? Magnus mentioned that.”

“That’s very complicated, and there's a lot we still don't know,” Lucretia said.

“Then what do you know?”

“I...” Lucretia started, pausing as she searched for words. “You do know what bonds are, right?”

“Something that connects everything to each other?” Angus said. He had heard the IPRE discuss them several times, but he didn’t know much more than that. They weren’t the kind of thing covered in his seventh grade science class.

“Exactly,” Lucretia said with a nod. “Emotion, love, shared experiences, those things have huge effects in shaping interpersonal bonds. So if someone could destroy a bond completely or muffle it somehow, then it could erase everything connecting two people.”

“And they would forget each other?” Angus asked. It fit with what he knew of Lup and Barry and their disappearance.

“Yeah, it’s been theorized that that would be one of the side effects,” Lucretia said. “But the impact they had on each others’ lives, and that sort of thing would also be gone. We’re not sure whether or not it affects physical things though. Like if someone cuts off your arm and you snap the bond between the two of you, we don’t know if your arm would grow back or not.”

“Do you know how you could destroy a bond then? And could you fix it if it was gone?” Angus wanted to feel hopeful. The complete severance of connection that Lucretia described clearly wasn’t true for Lup and Barry, since the IPRE still reacted to their names. Still, if bonds were involved, then this was even more than targeted amnesia.

Lucretia shrugged. “It’s never been tried. Too unethical. Besides, bonds are tied to the soul, which makes it hard to see them or do anything to them while the soul is still in the body.”

Given what Angus knew of the crimes that were committed, he didn’t think that would stop whoever had taken Lup and Barry.

“But, from what we do know of bonds, I don’t think they could be replaced if they were broken completely,” Lucretia added. “Or if you could, they would have to be rebuilt from scratch.”

“Okay, thank you for telling me, ma’am!” Angus said. He normally considered himself a brave boy, but right now, there was a significant part of him telling him to run away from this possibility, or to at least end the conversation. The idea of him being forgotten by everyone he had ever had an interaction with was terrifying, and he didn’t want to think about that happening to someone else.

“It’s no problem,” Lucretia said. “Now, before you go off to do your own thing, I heard you got a C on your last math test.”

Angus looked down, shame burning in his cheeks. That was certainly one way to distract him from his troubling thoughts about bonds and Lup and Barry. He wasn’t sure if he preferred this though.

“It’s just—” Angus scrambled to find the words to explain himself. “I didn’t understand the first part of the chapter, and then nothing after that made any sense! And now the chapter I’m on is even more confusing, and Taako has no idea how to do it either because he says that math has changed too much since he was in school, so I’m probably never going to understand math again, and—”

“Why don’t you show me what you got lost on?” Lucretia asked, her voice calm and steady enough to shake Angus out of the panicked spiral he was heading down. “I’m not bad with numbers. I could try to help.”

“Oh. Uh, thank you!” Angus said, finally looking back up at her. “I, uh, I’ll get out my homework!”

“Between the two of us, we’ll figure this out,” Lucretia promised.

...

Eventually, Angus’s brain began to feel like mush, but not before Lucretia had helped him figure out most of the previous chapter. There was still more to go before he would fully be caught up, but both agreed that there was only so much math a person could do in one day, and Angus had greatly exceeded that limit.

They spent the rest of the afternoon talking about books, something that lay much farther within both of their interests. It was a nice way for Angus to regain some of the energy that had been drained from him.

Taako picked Angus up that evening a little earlier than he normally did. Angus was a bit disappointed that he couldn’t stay and talk with Lucretia forever, but there were other things he wanted to do, so he wasn’t too sad.

When he got home, he went to his room and called Kravitz.

“Hello, sir!” Angus said when Kravitz picked up.

“Hello, Angus,” Kravitz replied, the smile evident in his voice. “Are you keeping yourself out of trouble?”

“Absolutely,” Angus said. “The only investigating I did was into memory spells.”

“Oh?” Kravitz asked. “What did you find?”

Angus explained everything he knew, not that there was much of it. From what Lucretia said, it seemed to depend on how exactly the memories were taken. Breaking whatever curse made the world forget about Lup and Barry would probably be impossible unless they caught the person who cast it.

“That sounds about as expected,” Kravitz said with a sigh. “I don’t know much about memory spells. They don’t usually fall into my jurisdiction. If we manage to solve any of this, I think taking everything to the IPRE and asking them to reverse the spell would be our best option.”

“Okay,” Angus said, though he was a little disappointed that Kravitz didn’t know more. Just because Kravitz had been around many years didn’t mean that he knew everything, Angus supposed. The duties of a reaper were probably pretty specialized.

“Anyway,” Kravitz said. “I started looking into the disappearance of Lup and Barry, talked to a contact with the police, that sort of thing.”

“Was there anything?” Angus asked, too eager to hear the answer to let Kravitz reach the point on his own.

“Sort of,” Kravitz said. “The police data banks were hacked into about a week after the IPRE break in. When I searched through the paper records, I found a missing persons report on both Barry and Lup buried deep in some forgotten cabinet. I couldn’t find a copy of the report on the computer, and I have to assume that the hacker deleted it.”

“Oh,” Angus said, and the whole situation made more sense.

The spell that erased Lup and Barry seemed to have only affected memories, not anything else. With so much of the world online and on computers, the person who had erased them had to have a good hacker if they wanted Lup and Barry to fully vanish. The only reason the traces of their existence weren’t completely gone was because even the best missed small things, like notes in a cookbook.

“Was there anything similar after the Miller Lab break in?” Angus asked.

“I don’t know,” Kravitz said. “The police didn’t say they were hacked or anything this time, and there were no paper records of the scientists’ disappearance either, but that could just be because the thieves got better.”

“We’re pretty sure the memory spell only affects already existing memories, right?” Angus asked. “Because that really fits what Lucretia said about bonds. I think that might be how it was done.”

“I can’t see why all this effort would be put into erasing police records and stuff, if the spells did more,” Kravitz said. “I think bonds would be a safe bet.”

“But I’ll keep looking just in case!” Angus added quickly. He didn’t want Kravitz to think he was the kind of detective who settled for the most convenient answer without checking all other possibilities.

“You know,” Kravitz said slowly. “If Lup and Barry really did work for the IPRE, it might explain why part of the lab was destroyed that night. If everyone thought that only five people had ever worked there, it might be hard to explain why there were extra rooms.”

“That’s true!” Angus couldn’t help but grin. He didn’t have all the pieces yet, and there was still so much he didn’t know, but an outline of the full picture was starting to form. The who and the why were mysteries, but the how was mostly coming together.

“I’ll keep looking for all the missing scientists and the people who took them,” Kravitz said. “You just keep researching memory spells and bonds, okay?”

“I’ll ask Lucretia more about it,” Angus said. He knew Kravitz was trying yet again to keep Angus out of trouble, despite Angus promising at least twice that he would. It wouldn’t be busy work though. Now that he had a better idea of what might have caused Lup and Barry to disappear, he could ask Lucretia more specific questions. “She promised to come over and help me with my math homework tomorrow. I can ask her then!”

“Sounds good,” Kravitz said.

“Okay!” That was one more thing to look forward to for tomorrow. Between the field trip to the Miller Labs and the possibility of a better understanding on this particular memory spell, Angus was sure to find a lot of clues.

“Well, I should get going,” Kravitz said.

“Reaper duties?” Angus wondered if Kravitz would tell him anything if he asked what exactly he was going to do.

“No, actually, I’m visiting you and Taako.”

“Oh!” Angus said. That sounded vaguely familiar, like maybe Taako had vaguely implied it once. It would explain why Taako had picked him up on the earlier side that day. “See you soon!”

“See you,” Kravitz echoed.

Exactly one week had passed since the first time Kravitz had visited them here, Angus realized. He had just come back from Lucretia’s then too.

It was a completely bizarre thing to think about. One week ago, Angus had dismissed the idea that Kravitz was an immortal; now, he knew the truth, and it was wilder than he could have thought. So much had changed in such a short time, but thinking it over, Angus found that he was pleased with all of it it.

He had an ally in his investigation, a far better understanding of his biggest case ever, and was on good terms with the person his guardian was dating. All he needed was to bring back Lup and Barry and the other missing scientists and find some more mysteries to solve, and Angus was pretty sure his life would be the best in the entire world.

...

The next day, Angus went to the Miller Laboratories. There were so many things to be excited about that he felt like he was soaring towards the sun with joy.

Being interested in science, Angus had been looking forward to this field trip for a while. Now that he knew its connection to his case, he was filled with even more anticipation. It was the perfect opportunity to seek out information without really breaking his promise to Kravitz.

The first part of the trip was taken up by a tour of the parts of the building open to the public. Angus was sure that he would be able to ask someone who worked there at least a couple of questions during it.

Though the whole class went on the tour together, it was split into smaller groups to make supervision easier. Angus’s group included Jack, the parent chaperone; June, his daughter; and two other kids that Angus had never talked much to. Jack was one of the nicer parents, so Angus was sure that he wouldn’t get in trouble if he stayed behind for a minute to talk to someone working at the Miller Labs.

As the tour began, Angus listened intently to the guide, both out of general interest, and in hopes of catching anything about the uploading souls to computers business.

It quickly became clear that this was quite promotional.

The discussion of all the cool products the Miller Labs were creating would encourage the students to talk about them with their parents, and hopefully cause them to buy more from the company. It was double pronged too, judging by the way the guide talked about how great it was to work there. They weren’t exactly subtle about encouraging students to study hard and try to join the company once they were done with college.

Between that and the amount of name exposure the Miller Labs would get merely by having students and their teachers and families think about the field trip, it was no wonder the fees were so low.

Despite his other thoughts, Angus paid rapt attention to everything, his mind swept up by all the cool technology he hadn't even thought to dream about. There were shrinking elevators, research into the use of commercial teleportation, a safer way to knock people out than tasers that non-magical people could use, robots that could do chores for people, and dozens more.

The morning passed in what felt like an instant, and it was only at the tour’s end that Angus realized nothing related to his case had been mentioned. It seemed hard to believe, even if the Miller Labs were trying to keep the break in quiet. Surely serious progress into preserving the consciousness beyond death was worth bragging about?

After informing Jack about where he was going, Angus slipped off to talk to the tour guide before the class moved on.

“Excuse me, sir! Mr. Klaarg? I have a question,” Angus called out, stopping the tour guide as he turned to leave.

“What is it?” he asked as he turned to face Angus. His voice was gravely, but his eyes were friendly.

“I—well, I heard that you—the Miller Labs, I mean—were close to figuring out how to store people’s minds in computers,” Angus said.

Klaarg raised a bushy eyebrow. “I don’t know where you heard that from, kid, but you should get your sources checked. We aren't doing anything of the sort. And if anybody else is, they’re ages away from getting it to a usable stage.”

“But—” Angus frowned. “Didn’t you have a break in? Where some of people who were working on it were kidnapped and the data from all the experiments was stolen?”

“There was a break in, but I’m surprised you heard about that,” Klaarg said. “Nothing important was taken. A few files that were just taking up space were deleted from our computers. Some rooms and cabinets were trashed too, but that’s all. Certainly no sign of anyone being kidnapped.”

“Oh,” Angus said. This didn’t line up with Kravitz’s story at all, but it did make it sound more similar to the IPRE’s break in. “I must have gotten it mixed up with some other lab or something. Thank you for your help, sir.”

He left to rejoin his group, his face flushing warm under the quizzical look Klaarg was giving him.

The class followed their teacher and chaperones to the cafeteria for their lunch break. As Angus stood in line to get his food, his mind whirled away at what could have caused the inconsistency between what Kravitz and Klaarg told him. As soon as he sat down at the table next to June, he sent off a quick text to Kravitz. _When was the last time you spoke to anyone at the Miller Labs about their break in?_

Then he put his phone away and tried to focus on his meal and the people talking around him. Speculating on possible explanations would be a waste of time until he got an answer from Kravitz.

He managed to last twenty minutes without checking his phone before he finally gave into temptation.

 _A few days after the break in,_ was the reply. _Why?_

Earlier, Kravitz had pointed out that unlike the IPRE, nobody at the Miller Labs had forgotten anything. But what if that had changed since he last spoke to anyone from there? It didn’t explain why Kravitz still remembered, but it did clear a couple things up and make the likelihood that Lup and Barry had worked for the IPRE much higher.

Angus relayed all this to Kravitz, then turned his attention back to his classmates and their discussion of the latest superhero movies. Personally, Angus thought Skinshifter was the coolest, and didn’t understand why someone would choose Springheel over her, but he couldn’t get invested in the argument enough to bother defending his opinion.

When lunch was nearly over, Angus checked his phone to find several messages from Kravitz.

_I know you have to be there because of your field trip, but NO MORE INVESTIGATING_

_Your theory makes sense though._

_The memory wiping spell that was used was very powerful. It’s quite possible that it took a few days to be set up or to go into effect_

_There are many reasons I may not be affected by it. I’m not technically alive anymore, and I might not have even been on this plane of existence when the spell was cast_

After reading them, Angus replied, _This was all the investigating I planned to do sir, I swear_

_I didn’t do anything more than asjk the tour guidl a quesiotn_

He had to hurry to type out the last few words as the teacher announced that lunch was over and everyone stood to move onto the next activity in a large room down the hall.

With a bit more of the mystery solved, Angus felt like he should have been able to put it aside more easily and focus on the field trip, but his brain didn’t work like that. The more he knew of a subject, the more he wanted to know the rest.

He tried to pay attention to the rows of interactive stations that the students cycled through in their groups. It was interesting enough, but he already knew a lot of the information, and a large portion of the activities associated with each station were fairly simplistic. It was easy to get distracted from it.

Eventually, Angus asked Jack permission to go to the bathroom, partly for the change of pace and partly because he really did need to go.

The bathrooms were just across the hall, and the class wasn’t leaving the room any time soon, so he wasn’t required to have an adult accompany him. The bathroom itself was uneventful: no getting lost on the way there, no gross messes to avoid, no strangers yelling at him for being in the wrong bathroom.

On his way out, however, he ran into Noelle leaving the ladies bathroom, wiping the last of the water from her hands onto her pants.

She blinked when she saw him. “Angus?! What are you doing here?”

“I’m on a field trip, ma’am!” he said. He had known that the odds of running into someone he knew at the Miller Labs were incredibly low, so he had been pretty sure it wouldn’t happen. It was really great to be proven wrong. “It’s nice to see you!”

Noelle matched his grin. “You too, honey. Are you enjoying your field trip?”

“I’ve learned some interesting things,” Angus said truthfully.

“I’m glad,” Noelle said.

“How’s your day going?” Angus remembered what Carey had mentioned, about Noelle being in some kind of trouble with her bosses. He hoped it was sorted out by now, and he didn’t know if he should ask about it or not.

“It’s going well enough, but I’d best get back to it,” Noelle said. “Have fun for the rest of your day!”

“Sure thing, ma—” Angus started as Noelle began turning away.

Before Angus could finish, Noelle collapsed to the floor.

Without even thinking about it, Angus instinctively sprang forward to her side to see if she was still breathing, his mind drowning in a hundred worries about unknown medical conditions or diseases or poisoning or anything that could possibly be the cause of Noelle’s sudden unconsciousness.

His thoughts were instantly silenced as he reached Noelle and glanced up, a shadowy figure holding a wand stepping into view. Angus had no time to react, no time to yell or cast a spell or even think about reaching for his wand before he too fell unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun note: Foxglove Summer is part of a series by Ben Aaronovitch. It’s about a mixed race police officer who becomes a wizard, builds bridges between old traditions and new, and fights white nationalists. The particular book that Angus was reading before Kravitz came revolves around a mystery involving kidnapped kids
> 
> The next update in this universe is going to be a seperate story from Taako's pov (which is why I’ve made this story into a series, so I have somewhere to put it). You don't have to read it for this story to make sense, but it does add a bit more than I could fit into Angus's pov.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This might be the most dangerous situation Angus had ever been in, but at least he was getting a lot of answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a big one

The first thing Angus noticed when he woke up was the carpet below his face. It had a cool pattern of bold red and black with strands of gold swirling through the design, but the material was rough and scratched his face.

Angus hadn't seen the entirety of the Miller Labs, but from what he had seen of the place, with all its white-tiled floors, he was willing to bet that there was nothing like this carpet in there. Which meant he wasn’t in the Miller Labs anymore.

He was lying on his stomach, and his entire front side hurt like someone had smacked his whole body, or maybe like someone had dropped him onto the ground. His glasses pushed awkwardly against one side of his nose, but he fought the urge to fix them. The last thing he remembered was him and Noelle being attacked, and Angus didn't want to risk unwanted attention until he could be sure that nobody was around.

“What’s with the kid?” asked a higher pitched voice, filled with bemusement.

If whoever had kidnapped him was talking, Angus could learn a lot more if they thought he was unconscious, so he continued to lay where he was as still as possible, even as his heart began to pound thunderously. The reality of the danger he could be in hadn’t really hit him until he heard the person speak.

“I happened to overhear him asking some suspicious questions,” a second voice said. It was similar to the first one with a similar dialect and intonation, but more masculine. “I figured it would be safer to not let that go unchecked.”

“Suspicious questions?” the first person repeated.

“About our new technological solution to mortality,” he quickly clarified.

Angus’s stomach twisted. Kravitz had told him not to go poking his nose into this case, but Angus had done it anyway, and now he was kidnapped. He was going to be in so much trouble. One downside of having so many adults play a part in raising him was that he was sure to receive no end of lectures.

That was all assuming that he made it out of this alive, but Angus really did not want to contemplate the alternatives.

“He knows?” the first voice demanded, an edge of panic turning her voice shrill. “How?”

“I caught him talking to this one, right before I snatched them,” the second one said. “Ms. Redcheek must have remembered enough to tell him.”

Fear dropped into Angus’s belly so quickly he almost flinched. Of course Noelle had been taken too; she had been knocked unconscious first. Part of him had been hoping that somehow she was safe, despite all reasonable assumptions.

A short sigh burst out of the first person. “This is why you have to find _everybody_ working on the project the first time!”

“I got all the scientists!” he protested. “I didn’t realize they had an assistant working with them only part of the time. It’s not like you knew about Noelle either!”

There was a second sigh, but this one was softer. “Do you know who else she might have told? Who else might remember what she worked on because they knew her?”

“I’ll go follow up on all that, okay? See if there’s anyone else she might have blabbed to.”

“Good,” the first voice said. “But let's take these two to the cells first.”

“Er... there’s a problem with that, Lyd.”

“What?” Her voice turned sharp with worry.

“I think the kid can do magic? He had a wand at least,” the second voice said.

Angus’s heart skipped a beat. With all of Kravitz’s warnings, he had taken to carrying his wand with him more consistently, keeping it hidden in case of something like this. If they had found it, he doubted they had let him keep it.

At least he knew several flame cantrips so he could still contact Kravitz, he tried to reassure himself. Those wouldn’t need a wand. And hopefully his captors wouldn’t have thought to take a random feather they found on him.

“We don’t have other warded cells! We only prepared for one prisoner!” the first said.

“Noelle isn’t supposed to be a magic user...” The second one trailed off with a sigh. “But I suppose we haven’t gotten this far by taking risks. What about the storage closet?”

As much as Angus wanted to hope that a ‘storage closet’ would be less guarded and contain more things that could help him escape, he doubted that people as cautious as these appeared to be would keep him there if that was the case.

“Is that smart?” the first person asked. “I mean you know what we keep in there.”

“No, but it’s better than anything else. It’s not like he could do anything of consequence in there, no matter what he tricks or magic he has up his sleeve.”

“I suppose,” she said reluctantly. “There are few places more secure than our closet.”

That certainly sounded ominous, but Angus wasn’t exactly sure that he could be more terrified than he already was at this point. He tried not to think of any of this, focusing only on remembering every clue they had dropped in this conversation so that he could solve this mystery.

He just had to think about something, anything to keep the panic from bursting out. After being quiet for so long, he couldn’t give himself away now. His captors probably would not have had that conversation in front of him if they knew he was awake. If they learned that he had heard every word, they might kill him and erase him sooner to reduce the risks.

A moment later, Angus was lifted into the air though he had not felt anybody touch him; someone had presumably cast levitate on him. He kept his body limp and his eyes tightly shut.

The air around Angus shifted, and the sharp rhythm of high-heeled boots on a wooden floor sounded behind him. Soon, the movement of air stopped, though the footsteps continued a couple steps further. Then Angus could hear the click of a lock turning and the soft creak of a door opening.

He was floated further along for about a second, then he hit the hard wooden floor, right as the door slammed behind him. A groan escaped him before he could think to stop it.

His whole body ached, and he found it terrifyingly difficult to breathe. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come, and just when he thought he might die from oxygen deprivation, his lungs started to get back to a more normal panicked state. He still couldn’t take deep breaths, nor could he stop the quick shallow pants, but at least he was getting air.

When Angus could finally catch his breath, he opened his eyes to complete darkness. One hand reached up to finally push his glasses into place, and the other stretched outwards in the direction he had come from. That hand collided with something hard behind him. He laid his palm flat against it and felt the surface stretch out far in all directions, the smooth bumpy wall cool against his fingertips.

Reaching out on his other side with his first hand, he was met with nothing but air until suddenly something hard struck the side of his pinky and fell over with a loud crash.

He froze, his heart beating wildly. A long moment passed, but nothing happened.

Pulling himself to his feet, Angus steadied himself against the wall, fumbling along its surface in hopes of finding a light switch. To his relief, there was one right by the door, and he flicked it on, blinking back tears as everything was suddenly bright.

Through the cracks in his eyelids, Angus could see the room he was in was far too large to really be a closet. It was really more of a storage room, with shelves lining three of the walls and in two rows in the middle. Covering the shelves and forming piles on the floor were various bits and pieces of junk and the kinds of thing that people used once or twice before giving it up to the depths of their garage. A few feet away from where he stood was a stone statue on its side. Angus was pretty sure that it was the thing he had knocked over.

He didn’t have much of a chance to take in anymore of his surroundings when a voice burst out from the far end of the room.

“Okay, fuck. I had a witty one-liner all planned out for when this kind of thing happened, but what the actual fu—orest fire is a freaking _kid_ doing here?!”

Angus jerked violently backwards, reaching for a wand he no longer had. He felt like he might scream, his panic and fear building to a bursting point. Choking back a sob, he tried to focus on his observations.

This voice was airy despite the intensity of its emotion in a way that sounded vaguely similar to the two voices from earlier. It had a sort of familiar cadence to it, though Angus couldn’t focus enough to try and place it.

Even though the light still stung, Angus forced his eyes open wider to take another quick look around. Despite the random containers and machinery parts cluttering the room, there was no space for a person to hide, even if they were very small.

Angus reached behind him, trembling fingers grasping for the door knob. He tried to turn it, but it was stuck. He had expected that, but he was pretty sure that if his throat wasn’t so choked up, he would be screaming now.

“Hey, hey, buddy, we aren’t going to hurt you,” said a slightly gravelly voice, clearly trying to be calming.

The oddly familiar sounding one snorted. “Not that we could, even if we wanted to.” Which, despite the likely intentions, was not very reassuring.

Even in a situation as dire as this, a spark of curiosity tugged at the corner of Angus’s mind, wondering who these people were and where their voices were coming from. Normally, Angus paid lots of attention to that curiosity, but right now he resolutely ignored it.

He would have given anything to be anywhere else in the world. Even with his hunger for knowledge, there was absolutely nothing appealing about being trapped in this room with two spooky voices, waiting for two other creepy people to experiment on him, kill him, and then erase the memory of his existence.

Heart pounding almost too loudly to think, Angus turned back towards the door, searching desperately for any way past it—a keyhole he could poke a makeshift lock-pick into, hinges he could try to break off, anything at all. There was no such luck. He reached into his pockets for a phone or wand or anything to help him, but there was nothing.

Earlier, his captors had implied that they had put him in a magic-proof room, but a true detective always confirmed their facts. Angus lifted his hand and tried to produce a flame, to no avail.

“Magic doesn’t work in here,” the gravelly voice said apologetically. “We’ve been trying for years, but they keep it pretty tight.”

“Can’t risk letting us out,” the more familiar voice muttered. “Cowards. They’re too afraid of what we’d do to them if that happened.”

“Hell yeah, they are. They do know what’s good for them,” the gravelly one said.

Angus swallowed. They clearly weren’t on good terms with his captors, but enemies of enemies were not always friends, and the venom in their tone didn’t exactly inspire him with confidence.

Maybe they didn’t want to kill him, but he was still trapped alone in the same room with them, and he didn’t know what they would be willing to do to get out of there. What if the voices thought that the way out of their prison was by killing him?

The reality of his situation sunk in a little further, and despite Angus’s best intentions, a tear leaked out of his eye.

“No—shit—don’t cry!” the familiar voice said, loosing some of its lightness.

“We aren’t going to hurt you,” the gravelly voice promised. “And, uh, we’ll get you out of here? Shit, how do you comfort kids?”

“Um, sorry. We don’t get many visitors, so we aren’t, like, the best at talking to people any more,” the familiar one said, sounding awkward enough that it almost did something to ease Angus’s all-consuming panic.

“Five years alone’ll do that to you,” the gravelly voice agreed. “But honestly, we don’t mean you any harm. We’re all victims of the same circumstances right now.”

Angus forced himself to take a deep breath, despite the hyperventilation creeping into his lungs, despite the pain from being dropped onto his chest twice in the past few minutes. Without an immediate escape plan, he didn’t have much choice but to put some amount of trust into these voices.

“E—excuse me? Where—where are you?” Angus managed to say, his voice only trembling a little. He looked around the room another time, but there was still no sign of any person.

“Over here in these empty-looking jars, bud,” the gravelly voice said. “We haven’t had human bodies for a while.”

Angus followed the sound, taking a couple shaky steps forward to get a better view. Tucked beside a skull and what looked like a broken motor were two jam jars.

“Who—who are you?” Angus asked. He addressed the jars, even though it felt kind of silly to do so. He only had the word of a disembodied voice that they housed any sort of consciousness.

“Right. Introductions. Those are things strangers do. See what I mean about forgetting how to interact with people?” the familiar-sounding voice said. The cheeriness in the tone sounded a tiny bit forced, and Angus could only hope it was meant as genuine comfort, not something to lull him into a false sense of security.

“Anyway,” the voice continued. “I’m Lup, and this loser-nerd is Barold.”

“Oh!” Angus exclaimed, fighting the urge to giggle in relief. A significant portion of the terror crushing down on him was swept away by a bursting curiosity and suddenly he could breathe freely again. The room suddenly felt a lot less eerie, even the light appearing more warm and friendly. He trusted them automatically, just for having been close to Taako. “I know about you!”

There was a beat of silence.

“Uh... you do?” Barry asked. “Wasn’t our existence completely erased?”

“I thought so too, babe,” Lup said, a frown audible in her voice.

“Memories, yes; electronic records, yes; but not _everything_!” Angus said, giddy with excitement. Here were Barry and Lup, the answers to Angus’s longest-running and most complex mystery! He had so many questions about their disappearance and their relation to Taako and the rest of the IPRE that he didn’t even know where to start.

“No offense, but who are you?” Lup asked. “Are you like some kind of stalker? Forget about how— _why_ do you know about us?”

And oh yeah, he probably should have introduced himself in return. He didn’t even have a good reason for forgetting societal convention like Lup and Barry did. “I’m Angus McDonald! A detective!”

“Did Taako hire you to find us?” Barry asked.

“Not exactly,” Angus said. He hoped that he hadn’t gotten their expectations up by making them think that Taako was aware of their disappearance. “It’s just there was some stuff missing from all of the IPRE’s memories, and I saw your names in one of Taako’s cookbooks, and then I learned about a similar break-in that happened at the Miller Labs, and all of that lead me to here! I don’t actually know very much about either of you.”

“Is—You know Taako? Is he okay?” Lup asked.

“He...” Angus started, trying to figure out how to respond as kindly as possible. Lup and Barry had very obviously been close to him, and he didn’t want them to feel worse about being gone than they probably already did. “He’s okay, but you can tell he’s missing something important, even if he doesn’t know what it is.”

“Oh,” Lup said softly.

“Hey, if Angus was smart enough to end up here, the three of us combined will be enough to get out,” Barry said quietly. “We’ll find Taako. We’ll figure it out.”

“How do you know Taako exactly?” Angus asked. His heart seemed to pause in anticipation for the long-awaited answer. Was it through the IPRE? Did their connection go beyond that, as the writing in the cookbooks and Taako’s particularly strong reaction to their names seemed to indicate?

“How do _you_ know him?” Lup shot back.

“I met him on a case, and then he offered to teach me magic,” Angus said, giving the short explanation, only half paying attention in his eagerness to learn the truth. “What about you?”

Lup scoffed. “He’s my identical twin. How could I _not_ know him?”

That made a certain sense, with the voice and all the gaps in Taako’s childhood memories. Angus’s stomach clenched; Taako must have lost so much more than anybody else had—except Barry’s relatives maybe, if he had any. No wonder he reacted the strongest to the mention of Lup and Barry, out of all the IPRE.

There was also the _identical_ twin part, and there was only one way that would make sense. Even though it was off topic, Angus couldn’t help but ask, “I—I don’t mean to pry, but are you trans?”

“Hell yes, my dude,” Lup said, with just the slightest edge of wariness that Angus recognized well.

“Me too!” Angus exclaimed.

“If I had a body, I would totally be high-fiving you, so just imagine that happening,” Lup said.

Grinning widely, Angus lifted himself onto his toes and back down, the energy from all his excitement and relief unable to be contained in a still body. He wondered if this played a part in the reason Taako had not only been accepting and supportive of Angus’s gender, but had also been quite knowledgeable and helpful too.

“I—sorry, I should get back on task,” Angus said, trying to move on from the wild floaty feelings in his heart. “I can’t help figure out how to get out without knowing more about your disappearance.”

There was a brief hesitation.

“We don’t know everything,” Barry said. “But we’ll tell you what we do know.”

Having literally nothing else he could be doing, not that he would prioritize anything above this, Angus sat down and prepared to take in their tale.

...

Ten years ago, when the IPRE had formed, there were seven members. Each specialized in different skills that combined to create the scientific research dream team.

At first Lup and Barry had focused on discovering how to extend life with the rest of the IPRE, but they eventually split off to plan for the consequences that could occur once their goal had been met.

One of the problems that could come up with immortality was that even if the body was perfectly young and healthy, the mind might not be. Souls existed, and a person could continue to be the same individual even without a body; this was a fact. What was not so clear was where exactly the line between soul and brain was.

Barry and Lup had taken on this question eagerly, hoping to see if healthy brain cells were all that was needed to keep the mind from degrading with time. At a couple points, they had gotten off track from their original goal, chasing down questions that were brought up in their research. They studied bonds and souls and perhaps a bit more necromancy than might be entirely legal. They had found out a lot of interesting stuff though, so neither of them thought the time was wasted, even if it wasn’t exactly relevant to the IPRE mission statement.

Their research had gone wonderfully. Too wonderfully. So wonderfully that a pair of siblings, Lydia and Edward, had kidnapped them to further their own research into immortality.

Despite their grand aims, IPRE was really doing more to cure cancer and genetic diseases and that sort of thing than to actually create unending life. They weren’t likely to reach anything approaching immortality for at least a couple decades, and neither was any other group working on the problem.

Unlike other scientists, Lydia and Edward wanted the answer immediately, and they didn’t care what needed to be done to achieve it.

With less concern over legality and morality, the siblings took things a few steps further than anybody else had, kidnapping and murdering top researchers, combining others’ theories and studies with their own and performing dangerous experiments on people. And then after they did that, they made their victims disappear to cover their tracks.

Using Lup and Barry’s findings on the exact boundary of a soul, Lydia and Edward had neatly separated their souls from their bodies, sticking them into jars to keep them around. Afterwards, using some kind of bond-centric spell also based off of one of Lup and Barry’s studies, Lydia and Edward wiped the memory of their existence, the first of their victims to be so thoroughly erased but unfortunately not the last.

It wasn’t done perfectly. Bonds were very strong, and as far as any of them knew, they were probably impossible to cut.

Instead, Lydia and Edward had covered them up and cloaked all the pre-existing bonds. That was why Lup and Barry could remember their friends and probably why the IPRE reacted to their names, but it had done its job well enough. Nobody could remember them so nobody came looking for them.

A side effect of the spell was that all the research Lup and Barry had done would also vanish from people’s minds since it was too tied up with Lup and Barry to continue existing when they did not.

Although they had spent the last five years in a locked room, Lup and Barry managed to catch glimpses of the siblings’ continued efforts. From what they could tell, Edward and Lydia had kidnapped and gotten rid of a few more researchers to add more pieces to the puzzle of immortality. Nothing had worked so far.

“The thing is, they can preserve a soul, but it’s not really worth living if you’re just stuck in a jar,” Barry explained. “And they’re having trouble making the soul control anything else they stick it into.”

“They’ve been trying a few different things, but I don’t think any of it’s worked,” Lup added. “I’m not sure what it is this time, but—”

“It’s computers,” Angus interrupted.

There was a moment of silence.

“What?” Barry asked.

“The Miller Labs—the last place that Lydia and Edward took stuff from—they were working on preserving souls electronically,” Angus said.

“That explains all the trashed robot parts we’ve been getting recently,” Lup muttered.

Angus looked around, and sure enough he could spot a few robotic parts scattered across the room. There weren’t enough of them to have drawn his notice earlier, but if they had all come recently, it had to be significant. “If they want bodies, robots are probably better than just computers.”

“Wait a second,” Barry said. “How do you know what the Miller Labs were working on? Shouldn’t you have forgotten it?”

“Um,” Angus said. “I actually didn’t know about the Miller Labs until weeks after they were broken into. A reaper told me about it.” He really hoped that Barry and Lup wouldn’t be as freaked out over Kravitz as he had been at first.

“A reaper, like the Grim Reaper?!” Lup asked, sounding just as alarmed as Angus feared she would. “Are you in danger in any way?”

“No!” Angus said immediately. Then he considered the situation he was currently in. “Or at least not from reapers. His name is Kravitz. He doesn’t collect souls of regular people or anything, he just makes sure people don’t break the rules of life and death.”

“Well shi—shoot, if I knew that reapers existed before, there would have been some necromantic experiments that I wouldn’t have done,” Barry muttered.

“How did you even come across him?” Lup asked. “I don’t think eight year old boys—”

“I’m eleven, ma’am!”

“—should just be running into reapers on a regular basis.”

“He—” Angus started, then was filled with the sudden sense that he probably should have brought this up earlier, considering Lup and Barry’s closeness to Taako. “Sorry for not saying this before, but, uh, Taako has a boyfriend right now? And—”

“No fucking way,” Lup said flatly. “My _brother’s_ dating the _Grim Reaper_?”

“Basically,” Angus said.

Lup burst into cackles. “I leave him for _five years_ and _this_ is what he does?”

“Can’t say I was expecting that,” Barry muttered.

“So anyway, Kravitz told me about the case he was working on,” Angus cut in quickly before they could get too off topic. “And I went to the Miller Labs on a field trip. Then Edward came to kidnap my friend Noelle because they missed her when they took the other scientists. He got me too when I ran into her because he overheard me asking someone a question about the case.”

“So Kravitz could remember all the stuff about the Miller Labs?” Barry asked.

“He’s undead too, sort of,” Angus said. “Maybe that’s why he and you two are unaffected by the bond thing?”

“That would sort of make sense,” Barry said slowly.

“More sense than Taako dating a reaper, which apparently exists,” Lup cut in. “I’m still not over that.”

“Yeah, hopefully this won’t cause any trouble between us,” Barry said.

“Kravitz is really quite nice!” Angus said, feeling the urge to defend him particularly strongly because he had also jumped to bad conclusions at first.

“Look, I can see why having reapers around to clean up messes like Lydia and Edward’s would be nice, but as someone who studies necromancy and is currently undead, I can’t say I’m personally thrilled at the idea,” Barry admitted. “If he enforces the laws of life and death, well I’m breaking at least one right now.”

“But it isn’t your fault, sir!” Angus protested.

“I just hope he’ll see it like that,” Barry said.

Angus wanted to say something, but he didn’t actually know Kravitz all that well. Even though he believed that Kravitz was a good person, that didn’t mean their views of what was right completely matched up, especially considering his job. What if Kravitz _didn’t_ see it like Angus did, and Taako never got to see his sister and friend again?

“How about we worry about getting out of here first, okay?” Lup said. “It won’t matter much until then.”

“I know a way to contact Kravitz,” Angus said. “I’d need a fire though, and unless there are matches hidden under one of the computer disks or something...”

“Oh, _Angus,”_ Lup said, drawing out the syllables of his name with such wicked delight that it honestly terrified him. “That’s no problem. I _know_ fire.”

“You—you do?” Angus squeaked.

The door to the room swung open before she could respond, and Angus almost fell over in a rush of panicked surprise, even though he was already sitting down.

“Oh, you’re awake now?” the man in the doorway—presumably Edward—asked. His bright pink hair was shoulder-length, and his clothes were all glittery. Despite all the secret stuff he was doing, his appearances spoke of a loud and showy personality.

“You’re moving a bit faster than normal, aren’t you,” Lup called out. Angus could hear the careful layer of lightness in her tone. It was similar to how Taako sounded when he was really worried about something but didn’t want anybody to know. “I remember you had us locked up for days before you came for us.”

“Yeah, well, we’re on a bit of a time crunch,” Edward snapped, raising his wand.

“Don’t you fucking dare touch the kid,” Barry growled. Even Edward seemed surprised by the sudden intensity in the normally calm man’s voice, and he paused for an instant.

Angus took that opportunity to leap up and dash towards the door. Edward quickly recovered from his brief hesitation, but Angus threw a stool at him. It hit Edward perfectly on the chest as Lup and Barry cheered, buying Angus just enough time to rush past him and out into the hallway.

Not allowing himself a moment to falter, Angus ran, hoping to find Noelle and a way out of this place before anybody caught up to him. Where could they keeping her? Edward had mentioned cells, but Angus didn’t have time to search this whole building for where those might be.

The hall ended in a staircase that spiralled down to some sort of entryway. Going down seemed good. Cells were the kind of thing that were usually kept below ground, though maybe Edward and Lydia did it differently. Still, he had to check, and he didn’t know where else he could.

Angus’s foot had barely landed on the first step when he heard another voice behind him.

“Oh no you don’t,” Lydia said, and the next moment, Angus found himself unable to move. He fell forwards, helpless to catch himself, his body floating to a halt right before he could hit the sharp corners of the stairs in front of him. “You aren’t getting out of this so easily.”

He began to float back up the hall. The floor moving underneath him combined with his fear and made him want to throw up, but he clenched his jaw and focused hard on keeping everything in.

A doorframe passed beneath him, and then he was sent upright and lowered into a chair, magic bending his body so he could sit properly in it.

The room he was in was fairly spacious, with all sorts of ingredients for potions and spells stored away on shelves that lined the walls. A long table was pressed against one wall, supporting six different screens, all hooked up to two computers underneath. The air was filled with a soft whirring sound, like an office of some sort, and it was almost comforting in its familiarity.

Since he had been floated in backwards, there was a large section of the room that Angus couldn’t see, but he assumed it had more equipment for Lydia and Edward to use in their studies.

Next to the chair Angus was in was a table with all sorts of herbs and body parts of rare creatures lined up and ready for use. Beyond them were a bunch of cables hooked up to a blurry gray thing that Angus couldn’t see because glasses weren’t great for peripheral vision.

This was very clearly a laboratory of sorts, the place where Lydia and Edward likely worked on their quest to find immortality. It did not bode well at all for Angus.

There was also a small brazier almost within reach, a few flames gently flickering within. Angus tried to move his arm, desperate to grasp the feather in his pocket and throw it in the fire, but it was no use. Lydia’s magic held.

There had to be some way to break the spell they had on him before it was too late. He just needed more time. He tried moving any part of his body he could, tensing and clenching his muscles, but only his tongue worked.

“Please!” he cried, the word coming out slightly warped through his frozen jaws. “You don’t have to hurt me! If you let me go, I won’t ever ever tell any—”

Lydia scoffed from somewhere just out of sight. “Even if we wanted to risk that, you’re too valuable.”

“There’s no point in throwing away a test subject,” Edward continued. “And who knows? We’re quite close to achieving our goal. You might even survive.”

“But why do all this?” Angus asked. His curiosity was the only emotion he had left to cling onto to keep his head above the panic that threatened to over take him. If he could just focus on that, if he could keep them talking, maybe some opportunity for escape would present itself.

Or maybe it wouldn’t. He was trapped somewhere nobody would be able to find him. His only help against two extremely powerful magic users were two disembodied voices and a possibly still unconscious Noelle. He had one shot at contacting Kravitz, and that was it; Lydia and Edward were too cautious to let him try anything a second time, even if it seemed as innocuous as throwing a feather into some fire.

He should have just done what Kravitz wanted and not taken the seemingly harmless risk of asking a tour guide some questions. He should have paid more attention to what had caused Noelle to fall unconscious. If he had just been a little more careful, he might not have been in this situation in the first place.

“Why are you so desperate to find immortality?” Angus continued, even though his heart told him it was hopeless.  

“You’re young, so maybe you don’t know this, but death is really freakin’ awful,” Lydia said, stepping into view. Her hair was long and blue, and her outfit complemented Edward’s. “Especially when you have someone you care about.” She exchanged a glance with Edward, so fast that Angus almost missed it.

Angus wanted to protest that he did know death, and not just Kravitz. His parents had died, his grandfather had died. He _knew_ that death sucked, because even if he liked where his life was at now with Taako and the IPRE, that didn’t erase how awful it had been—how awful it still was—to lose so many people he had depended on for so much.

But he didn’t think he would be able to get that many words out, nor did he want to give Edward and Lydia any more personal information than they already had.

“The real question is why _wouldn’t_ we?” Edward said, arching an eyebrow.

“Because hurting people is wrong?” Angus suggested, his voice higher pitched than he wanted. He could feel the spell on him weakening its grip, like if he pulled very hard, he might be able to move. If he could buy a bit more time before one of them remembered to tie him up or cast another spell on him, maybe he would be able to have a second to act in.

Very quickly, he glanced at the fire out of the corner of his eye, preparing himself to make a move for it. His heartbeat thudded away the moments until he could move freely.

Lydia laughed. “There are some things worth doing bad deeds for, kiddo.”

“Things—and people,” Edward added, his expression sombering. “Let’s get this started, Lyd. We don’t have that much time left.” He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, in a way that was clearly meant to be intimidating.

Despite knowing Edward had only done that for the effect, it worked, and Angus could almost feel himself trembling. He had to act before his movement gave himself away. The spell was nearly gone, and soon there would be nothing to stop his shaking.

As Lydia and Edward turned towards the spell ingredients laid out on the table, Angus forced his outstretched hand to go down from its frozen position, pushing it into his pocket as he stepped forward. Before Lydia and Edward could whirl back around to see him, he had pulled the feather out of his pocket and dropped it right into the brazier.

The feather curled up, glowing purple under the heat as the fire flared up. After another moment, it crumbled to ash and was completely gone.

A surge of relief hit Angus, and he let his shaky legs give out beneath him. Now he just had to hope that Kravitz would respond sooner rather than later

“What did he do?” Lydia hissed, her voice high pitched and panicked. She took a step towards the brazier, one hand lifted out to act, but she seemed to realize it was too late to do anything, and her hand dropped.

“I don’t know!” Edward cried. He raised his wand and a moment later, Angus felt the familiar feeling of a sleeping spell hitting him.

He managed to resist it this time, but he felt no need to let Lydia and Edward know that. He closed his eyes, holding in his quick panicked breaths. Kravitz would come soon, he told himself, clinging onto that hope. He _had_ to come.

Then there was the sound of something ripping. Edward screamed while Lydia gasped. Angus risked opening his eyes and looking up, figuring that Lydia and Edward were probably too distracted to pay him much attention.

In the center of the room, a portal to some gray place was vanishing, leaving behind a skeleton in dark swirling robes carrying a long scythe. The part of Angus’s brain that hadn’t quite adjusted to the fact that Kravitz was a reaper screamed at him to run, but he swallowed his fear.

The skeleton turned to look at him, and in the next moment dark skin grew across white bone, forming a familiar face.

As soon as Kravitz had them, his eyes widened. “Angus! You’re okay!”

For the first time in what had felt like an eternity, Angus felt like he might make it through this day alive, and suddenly he couldn’t hold back his tears anymore. He jumped up and rushed forward to wrap his arms around Kravitz’s waist, clinging as tightly as he could. Heart beating wildly with relief, Angus buried his face into Kravitz’s cloak to hide his sobs.

“You—you came! I—you said not to investigate, but then I did, and I thought nobody would notice, except they kidnapped me, and I thought I might die—!”

Kravitz shifted, and then two arms were pulling him in even tighter. “Of course I came, Angus. I’m so glad you’re alive. We spent hours trying to figure out where you might be, and I was almost starting to think we might never find—” He cut himself off with a choked sound.

Angus just sobbed harder. He hadn’t even thought of how everybody else would react to his disappearance.

“You’re okay now, Angus,” Kravitz murmured, kneeling so he could hug Angus properly. “I’m going to take you home.”

“But Lydia and Edward—” Angus looked up from beyond Kravitz’s shoulder, and sure enough, the siblings had vanished. With all his focus on Kravitz’s arrival, Angus hadn’t even thought to check what they were doing until now.

“I’ll handle them,” Kravitz promised. “It’s my job. I’ve got this covered.”

“Noelle—she—they took her too!”

“I know,” Kravitz said softly. “We were told about her going missing at the same time as you. I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

“I found—I found Lup and Barry,” Angus said, suddenly overcome with urgency. He had to let Kravitz know where they were, so they could be reunited with the life they had been stolen away from. He had to let Kravitz know that they didn’t mean to break the laws of life and death or anything.

“You did?” Kravitz asked, stiffening with shock.

“They’re just souls in jars—but you can’t—they can’t get in trouble!” Angus said quickly. “It’s not their fault they aren’t in their bodies or that they didn’t die properly!”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kravitz said.

This did not sufficiently reassure Angus. “Lup is Taako’s sister, and you can’t—!” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence, just that he absolutely could not let Taako continue to live without the sister he had been unknowingly missing for so long.

“Taako’s—?!” Kravitz cut himself off. “Look, I won’t let them come to harm. I’ll talk to the Raven Queen if I have to, okay?”

“Thank you,” Angus mumbled into Kravitz’s cloak, squeezing him tighter. “They—we figured the mystery out together. They know everything.”

“Then I’ll talk to them once you’re somewhere safe,” Kravitz said, gently running his hand over the top of Angus’s curls. “That was some good detective work there. I’m very proud of you.”

Angus drew his head back to look up at Kravitz’s face. “You’re not angry?”

Kravitz chuckled, though it sounded slightly too hysterical to be entirely genuine. “I’m not angry. Worried, absolutely, but not angry. Let’s just get you home, okay?”

He let go of Angus, who looked up to see Kravitz stand and remanifest his scythe in his hand. After making a rectangular slicing motion, a doorway opened up to some other world. Angus could glimpse a sea of swirling lights before Kravitz pulled him in again with his free arm so that Angus’s face was pressed against his side.

“We aren’t really supposed to bring living people to the Astral Plane, but these are special circumstances,” Kravitz said. “Still, it’d probably be better if you don’t see too much of it.”

“Will—will you get in trouble, sir?” Angus asked, a stab of fear shooting through his chest. “I don’t want to get out of here that badly! We can take the long way!”

“Don’t worry,” Kravitz said, gently patting his head. “That one is more of a guideline than a law. And safety comes first. Are you ready?”

Angus wasn’t entirely comfortable with entering the realm of the dead, especially not after being so close to entering it through a more natural method (or maybe not, given what happened to Lup and Barry). He trusted Kravitz though, and right now he wanted nothing more than to be safe in his home.

Swallowing his fear, Angus nodded into Kravitz’s side and wrapped his arms tightly around him.

“This will just take a second,” Kravitz said, guiding him forward a couple steps.

Even with his eyes closed, the difference between the planes was instantly obvious. The air was cooler, and a bone chilling breeze battered his back. It was echo-y in a similar way to indoor swimming pools, but instead of kids laughing and parents scolding, there were just whispers and the rustle of something almost like water.

Then Kravitz shifted a bit and walked them forward a couple more steps, and all of that instantly vanished.

“Angus!” someone yelled, and the next instant, Kravitz was pushed aside, and Angus felt two arms tightly clutching him. “Don’t you ever fucking disappear like that on me again, or I swear to Pan I’ll disown you.”

Two years ago, Angus might have actually been worried that Taako meant what he said, that he wouldn’t want to look after Angus if he kept getting himself into trouble.

Now, he could hear the shakiness in Taako’s voice, feel the slight dampness on his shoulder that must have come from a tear. He had more confidence in Taako’s desire to keep him around, and this reminder made him want to start crying again. If he had been killed by Edward and Lydia, Taako would have lost one more family member he wouldn’t even be able to remember, and then he would be all alone again.

“I’m sorry,” Angus sniffled, wrapping his own arms around Taako. “I—I’ll try not to do that again.”

Taako gently drew away a couple of inches so he could grip Angus’s face and examine him. Now that he was able to see his surroundings properly, Angus could tell they were all in Taako’s room. Kravitz awkwardly hovered a few steps away from where Taako was kneeling.

“Are you okay?” Taako demanded. “If they fucking _touched_ you, I’m coming in with Skull Man over here and wreaking hell.”

Kravitz looked rather alarmed at that. “I—I don’t think I can allow...” he muttered, trailing off under Taako’s glare.

“You know about Kravitz?” Angus asked, eager to have something else to focus on besides how close he had been to having his soul separated from his body.

“About him being a reaper and enlisting you in his investigation?” Taako asked.

“That’s not really what happ—” Angus started.

“He told me everything after I told him you were missing,” Taako continued. “We’re all going to have to have words later, but that’s not important now.”

“And, uh, I should head back,” Kravitz said, gesturing in the direction the portal had been. “A lot of loose ends to wrap up, and all that.”

“Thank you for saving me,” Angus said.

“I’d say anytime, but let’s hope this doesn’t happen again,” Kravitz said with a weak grin. Angus could tell he was trying to lift the mood, but it wasn’t really working. “Stay safe, okay?”

“You too,” Angus said as Kravitz cut himself another doorway with his scythe.

Kravitz looked as if he was about to step through, but he hesitated. “Taako, I—”

Taako looked up from Angus, finally meeting Kravitz’s eyes. “Go rain vengeance on the people who hurt my boy. We can talk after.”

“I’m sorry for lying—”

“ _Later_ ,” Taako insisted. “Ya boy’s got enough shit going on to process without dealing with relationship problems.”

“Okay.” Kravitz nodded and stepped through the doorway, which vanished the moment he had passed through.

“Relationship problems?” Angus asked, his voice cracking slightly. What if getting kidnapped had ruined the happiness Taako and Kravitz had found together?

Taako frowned. “Did you literally not hear a word I just said? I am not having this conversation right now with _anybody_.”

“Oh,” Angus said, his mind slipping back into those thoughts of _if only he had listened to Kravitz’s advice instead of trying to find loopholes in the agreement he made, if only he kept his mouth shut, if only he had looked around for anybody who might be listening when he asked Klaarg those questions, if only he had been more cautious when he saw Noelle collapse, if only—_

Taako’s face softened back into concern. “It’s going to be okay. Everything will be fine, alright? I promise.”

Angus swallowed, meeting Taako’s eyes. “Okay,” he whispered, and hoped that it would be true.

“You’ve got a couple options right now,” Taako said. “The nerd squad is all crammed into our living room—”

“The nerd squad?” Angus asked.

“Yeah, I was at work when the school called to say you were missing, and everybody there decided that meant they had a free invitation to our home or whatever,” Taako said. “They’ll probably be way too loud when they realize you’re here, so I can send them away, if you want.”

Angus thought about it. He wasn’t normally a fan of being in the same space of a lot of loud and emotional adults who all wanted to hug him, but right now, he really wanted to see them all. Maybe that would make his rescue feel more real, convince him a little more properly that he really was back home, not just dreaming about it.

“Do they know about Kravitz?” Angus asked. He didn’t know how he would explain his mysterious appearance otherwise.

“Yeah, it’s all been covered,” Taako said.

“What about the school? And the police?” Angus asked, his concern growing into something approaching panic. He hadn’t even considered the consequences of his disappearance on the broader world. All of his friends were probably super worried right now! “How are we going to explain that I’m back?!”

“Oh, right....” Taako groaned softly, and Angus would bet that he hadn’t thought about any of this either. “Well... Kravitz does work for a investigative group, of a sort. Or at least that’s his cover. I’m sure the two of us will come up with something.”

“Okay,” Angus said. Worry about it later, seemed to be Taako’s method of dealing with this, and maybe it would be good to follow suit right now. The clock on the wall showed that it was nearly ten at night, and there wasn’t much he could do about anything at the moment. What he wanted most was to see his family then sleep and try to pretend that this experience had all been nothing more than a bad dream.

Tomorrow he could worry about the school and police, tomorrow he could figure out how to tell Taako that he had a sister he couldn't remember, tomorrow he could worry about the fate of all the souls Edward and Lydia had stolen. Today was almost over, and he just wanted peace in the remaining hours.

“You ready to face the hoard?” Taako asked.

Angus giggled weakly. “Yes, sir!”

Taako let go of Angus’s shoulders and helped him up. The two of them entered the living room where all the other members of the IPRE plus Carey and Killian were sprawled across the couches and floor.

The first person to notice them was Magnus who let out a yell so loud that if their landlady wasn’t in their room at the moment, Angus would be worried about getting kicked out because of noise complaints.

The next few moments passed in a haze as suddenly everyone was jumping up and hugging him and crying. It was a little repetitive, with everyone telling him how glad they were that he had made it home again and again, but Angus couldn’t exactly criticize. His own thoughts looped along the same tracks, of how lucky he was to be able to experience this instead of being stuck in a jar in a storage closet for the rest of time.

Soon Taako drew the attention of the other adults, giving Angus some space to breathe. Only Killian stayed behind, sitting on the other side of the couch from him.

“Do you know what happened to Noelle?” Killian asked.

Angus froze, a shard of guilt shooting through him. After telling Kravitz about her, he had forgotten that she was still in danger. Here he was enjoying his arrival back home, while Noelle very well might be having her consciousness transferred into a robot at this very instant. What kind of detective was he, to leave his friend behind without any guarantee of her safety?

“Oh,” Killian said, clearly reading the answer off of Angus’s face. She looked down.

“I’m sorry, ma’am!” Angus blurted out. “I should have stayed to make sure she was safe—”

“No,” Killian cut in sharply, looking back up at him. “You absolutely should not have done that. I’m worried for her, but it is in no way your fault. You barely got out of this yourself. There’s no reason you should have to do anything.”

Angus nodded, even though he didn’t entirely believe her. “I told Kravitz about her, and I’m sure he’ll get her out first thing.”

Not a lot of time had passed since Kravitz first arrived to rescue Angus, so Lydia and Edward probably wouldn’t have the time to do anything to Noelle. Unless they decided it would be quicker to just kill her and clear the evidence. Unless they had already experimented on her before they got to Angus.

“Then she’ll be okay,” Killian said, and Angus knew it was a platitude because she wasn’t the kind of person to trust someone she barely knew, but he nodded anyway.

Davenport peeled away from the others and came to stand by the two of them. “How’s it going? Is there anything you need, Angus?”

Over the course of this evening, Angus had started to grow very tired of people asking him that question. He didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted to be left in peace and quiet; he wanted never to be left alone again; he just wanted the world and his life to go back to the state it had been the day before when Noelle was safe and Taako wasn’t upset with Kravitz.

But Angus couldn’t have any of that, so he said, “I think I would like to go to sleep, sir.”

Davenport gave him a nod. “I’ll let Taako know.” Then he walked off.

“Don’t blame yourself for it,” Killian said, leaping right back into their previous conversation. “There’s nothing you could have done to help Noelle.”

“You don’t know that!” Angus protested. He had only given the vaguest account of his kidnapping, that he and Noelle had been taken by a pair of immortality-seeking criminal scientists who wanted to keep them quiet and test out their latest attempt at preserving life. Killian wouldn’t know if there was anything he missed or something he should have done differently.

Killian raised an eyebrow. “Well, _was_ there something you could have done?”

“Uh...” Angus looked down. “Not really.”

“Then there’s no point in regret,” Killian said firmly.

Before Angus could reply, Taako’s voice rose above the noise of everybody else talking. “Alright, freeloaders, time for y’all to head out. Angus is back, so I don’t even know what you’re still doing here.”

Everyone seemed to find it necessary to say goodbye to him and check one last time to make sure he was okay before they left, even as Taako was trying to physically push them out the door. Angus didn’t mind much though; despite his sleepiness, it was nice to know that so many people genuinely cared.

Eventually, Taako managed to get everybody out, and the apartment was left in an unbearable silence. Already, Angus missed the noise and company he had been so eager to escape minutes before. At least with everybody around, he was surrounded by the constant reminder that he was far from Lydia and Edward's place.

“You good, Ango?” Taako asked quietly. “Do you want to talk about it? Or leave it for a later time?”

Angus hesitated. Now that Taako had specifically invited him to talk about everything, he would actively be keeping a secret if he didn’t mention Lup and Barry. After seeing the awkwardness of Taako and Kravitz’s interaction, Angus didn’t want to lie to Taako anymore, even if it was only a lie of omission. It was just that he had no idea how to even start broaching the topic.

“I solved the mystery about the IPRE break in,” Angus started. “And... there’s something... I learned something very important about your past, and I don’t want to keep it a secret from you, but I don’t really know how to explain it.”

Panic started to build in Angus’s chest, and that only made it harder to find the words to make everything clear. If he stated outright that Taako had a sister he had forgotten the existence of, Taako would have no reason to believe him. All the pieces of evidence that Angus could use to prove his point were slipping from his exhausted mind, and all he could think to say was that he talked to a ghost in a jar who claimed Taako was her twin.

“Angus,” Taako said firmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “If you want to tell me something, I am literally all ears.” He smiled slightly, tugging on his larger-than-normal ears that Magnus occasionally teased him about. “But there is plenty of time for that later too. You don’t have to tell me anything tonight unless you feel like it. We can get some sleep, and you can tell me everything some time when you can actually keep your eyes open.”

Angus wanted to protest that he was perfectly awake, but a yawn cut him off. “Okay, sir,” he said reluctantly once his jaw stopped trying to rip itself off his head.

It wasn’t like one day would make a huge difference after five years. And maybe Kravitz would be back and could help Angus explain everything. He might even know a way to lift the memory spell.

“Night,” Taako said, but he barely took half a step before pausing to watch Angus in that careful, concerned way that the adults had been watching him all night.

Angus decided to ignore it and head to his own room, but he barely managed to look at his door before a crushing feeling of dread sank into his stomach. As a very young child, Angus had once believed in monsters that hid under beds and in closets, and at that moment, he was harshly reminded of that fear. It felt like something even worse than a monster was lurking in the empty corners of his mind, waiting for him to be alone in the dark to pounce.

“Sir?” Angus said, his voice coming out slightly squeaky.

“What is it, muffin?”

Angus looked at the ground. Quickly, he mumbled, “I don’t exactly want to be alone right now, so do you think it might be alright if I slept with you?” He grew quieter as the sentence went on, like he might be able to trick Taako into agreeing if he just made himself hard enough to understand.

Taako looked at him suspiciously, narrowing his eyes slightly. “Fine,” he said. “But don’t get used to it because this is a one time deal.”

“Thank you, sir!” Angus said, feeling like he could breathe again.

“Yeah, whatever,” Taako muttered. “Now go take a shower and stuff. I’m not having a dirty boy getting grime into my sheets.”

“Okay!” Angus said, and darted off to get ready for bed.

Despite Taako’s reluctant act, when Angus crawled in next to him, still damp from the shower, Taako wrapped an arm around him and didn’t let go all night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some unrelated world building notes:  
> In this universe, the STEM field has a second M at the end, standing for magic  
> The fifth fundamental force of the universe (alongside gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force) are bonds


	6. Chapter 6

When Angus woke up the next morning, a worrying amount of light was streaming in from the window. His heart jumped into action as he frantically shoved the covers off his bed, scrambling to get out before he missed the bus.

There was something off with the walls and covers of his bed though, and in a flash, he realized that this wasn’t his room.

With that, the memory of the day before flooded in, and Angus slumped back onto the pillow, flipping the covers back over him. Missing school was hardly his biggest concern right now.

Soft voices were coming from the living room through the cracked open door, and Angus could hear Taako and Kravitz talking. The smell of something warm and baked was drifting in, just like it had so many other weekend mornings when Angus slept in and Taako made pancakes or muffins or some other breakfast food. If Angus forgot everything that had happened recently, this would be the ideal lazy morning.

Angus closed his eyes and wiggled back down below the covers, pushing them over his head. Part of him wanted to stay in this moment forever and never face the rest of the day.

But that would be a boring way to live, he reminded himself. Even though he had only been awake for a couple minutes, a growing urge was already pushing him to get up, to talk to Kravitz and learn what had happened after he was rescued. He had so many questions, and none of them would be answered by just staying in bed.

Angus poked his head out from under the covers to squint at the clock. It was past nine; he wouldn't have been able to catch the bus at this point anyway, even if he wanted to. He sighed and reached out for his glasses. He pushed his feet from beneath the warm blankets onto the floor, the rest of his body sliding slowly out afterwards.

Without drawing Taako or Kravitz’s attention, Angus slipped back into his own room to get dressed. When he entered the main room of the apartment, the two of them were still sitting at the table, discussing something over mostly eaten crepes.

Their tones were amiable, but there was a bit of restraint in the way Taako gestured while he spoke and hesitancy in the way Kravitz started his sentences. Whatever had happened between them the night before wasn’t fully resolved, even if it did seem better than before.

Kravitz also looked a little different in his appearances. He wore a thin black cloak clasped together at the neck with a raven symbol made of what looked like bone. Above his usual skull earrings was a loop of gold, hanging from the upper part of both ears. If Angus had to describe the overall change, he would say that Kravitz was leaning more into the Grim Reaper aesthetic.

“Good morning, sirs!” Angus said with what he hoped was his usual amount of enthusiasm.

They stopped their conversation, turning to look at him with that carefully concerned gaze that he was starting to grow tired of.

“Morning, Ango,” Taako said.

Kravitz nodded at him in greeting. “How are you?”

“Pretty good!” Angus said, though he wasn’t entirely sure if he was or not. The day before sort of felt like a bad dream, but he knew that once the reality of it all sunk in, he would feel a lot worse. His current peace was temporary and somewhat artificial.

Taako pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “Want some crepes?”

“Yes, please,” Angus said. His stomach clenched, and Angus suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before. With everything going on, he had been too distracted to notice, but now that there wasn’t anything big happening, his body was demanding that he fix this problem immediately.

“Coming right up,” Taako said, marching straight to the kitchen and turning on the stove.

Angus pulled out another chair for himself and sat down. Not wanting to think about his gnawing hunger, he turned to Kravitz, currently his best source of distraction. “Is Noelle safe?”

“Yes,” Kravitz said immediately. “The first thing I did was to get her away from Lydia and Edward. Carey and Killian went to pick her up about half an hour after I brought you here.”

That was a long time to have passed in between, Angus thought, frowning slightly. Half an hour was about the amount of time Killian and Carey had been at his and Taako’s apartment. Why had they stuck around so long when Noelle was still at Lydia and Edward’s place?

“Those nerds forgot to bring their phones with them when they came over here last night,” Taako explained. “They didn’t get Kravitz’s message until after I kicked them out.” He poured the batter into the pan, a roar of sizzles erupting out before dying back down.

“Speaking of which.” Kravitz reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, taking out Angus’s cell phone and wand and setting them on the table in front of him. “I found these in the necromancers’ place.”

“Oh,” Angus said. With everything else going on, he had completely forgotten about his phone and wand, even though they were among the most important items he carried with him. It was weird to think that he had gotten involved with something with such high stakes that the objects that might normally have been his first consideration didn’t even make top twenty. But he didn’t want his silence to appear ungrateful, so he quickly added, “Thank you, sir!”

“No problem,” Kravitz said, smiling at him.

“What about Edward and Lydia?” Angus asked.

Kravitz’s expression hardened. “In the Eternal Stockade. They’re gone for good.”

“ _ Good _ ,” Taako said viciously.

The thought of never having to worry about Edward and Lydia again eased a fear Angus hadn’t even known he had.

“What about my friends and teachers? Do they know I’m alive?” Angus didn’t want people to worry about him or waste resources searching for him when he was actually safe.

“Yeah, Kravitz took care of it a couple hours ago,” Taako said, one end of his mouth curling slightly upwards in a smirk. “I’m milking this whole ‘boyfriend kept a giant-ass secret from me thing’ for all it’s worth, baby. What’s the point of having people feel bad about wronging you if you can’t use them to get out of awkward social situations?”

Kravitz shrugged. “To be fair, reapers hold official standings with human governments to reduce complications. The story of your kidnapping and rescue would sound better from me.”

“He cleared everything up with the police too,” Taako said, flipping the crepe off the pan onto a plate. “Such a useful guy.” He blew Kravitz a kiss.

Kravitz ducked his head, not quite managing to hide a soft smile. “Anyway, I, uh, it’s all cleared up, Angus.”

“Thank you, sir!” Angus said, a weight easing off his chest. The problems around this case weren’t all solved, but at least he didn’t have to worry much about his personal life anymore. “When do I go back to school?”

“As soon or late as you want,” Taako said. He had spread Nutella onto the flat crepe, and covered the surface with thinly sliced bananas. Angus watched as he rolled it loosely up, and added a dollop of whipped cream on top. “And you don’t have to decide right now.”

Which was good because Angus wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about anything currently, much less how he would in the future. Today, he had already missed a few hours of school, so he didn’t want to go, but what he would want tomorrow was as big of a mystery as any Angus had solved.

Taako plopped the plate with the finished crepe in front of him along with a fork and knife, and waited expectantly for him to start. Angus quickly grabbed the silverware and dug in.

Maybe it was because he was so hungry, maybe it was because he had spent a good portion of the previous day thinking that he would never be able to eat again, maybe it was because Taako was a phenomenal cook, but this crepe was the most delicious thing Angus had eaten in his life. He said as much, to Taako’s satisfaction.

Even though Taako was completely confident in his cooking ability, he thrived off compliments like a fish in water. Angus sort of thought that if Taako didn't receive praise for all his meals, he might stop cooking for other people all together.

After he had finished eating, Angus tried to remember any questions he still had about the case. All of them seemed to be about Lup and Barry or memory loss. He couldn’t ask Kravitz those while Taako was around, so he was forced to wait until a later time.

Instead, he listened to the amusing but still stilted banter between Taako and Kravitz and tried wrap his mind around the fact that he was safe and home. 

Without anything to distract him, there was nothing to stop his mind from circling around how close he had come to dying and how helpless he had been to do anything about it. He had almost lost everything because of one simple mistake, and if he hadn't been fortunate to know the right person, he wouldn't even be remembered enough to become a statistic.

Even Taako asking Kravitz about his life as a reaper could only hold Angus’s attention so much. There hadn’t been much time yesterday to process everything, and now it was all starting to crash down on him.

Angus brought out his one of his favorite Caleb Cleveland novels, hoping that one more distraction would be enough to stop him from thinking about everything all at once. As much as he loved this story, it didn’t keep his mind away from the whirlpool of what-ifs and concerns any better than Taako and Kravitz’s conversation did.

The opportunity to talk to Kravitz arrived an hour later when Taako announced that somebody had better go shopping if they wanted anything to eat for dinner.

Nestled among the couch cushions, Angus barely looked up from his book. He wasn’t really in the mood for dealing with crowds of strangers.

“Do you want to come or no, Ango?” Taako asked.

“No thank you. I’m at an exciting part of my novel!” He didn’t think much about his answer, even though it wasn’t exactly the full truth. Taako frequently went shopping both with and without him, never needing solid reasoning for Angus’s decision, and it never was a big deal.

But after the slightly longer than natural silence that followed, Angus glanced up from his book to see Taako and Kravitz having a silent debate that seemed to mostly involve heated eyebrows gestures and significant glances towards Angus.

“I don’t need to eat, Taako,” Kravitz said after another second of this. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been grocery shopping before. Certainly not in the last couple of centuries. I wouldn't know what to do at a grocery store if you sent me there.”

“Fine, play that card,” Taako said, rolling his eyes and ignoring Kravitz’s protestation that it was the truth. “We’ll have to fix your lack of shopping experience later.”

Angus was an observant enough detective to know that this wasn’t Taako’s normal behavior. A few days ago, Taako would have dragged Kravitz to the grocery store, making fun of his sheltered and out-of-date life as a centuries-old reaper. Even with whatever had happened between them, Taako had seemed to be getting along well enough with Kravitz this morning that he probably wouldn’t try to leave him behind just to avoid him. Angus’s kidnapping must have really shaken Taako if he was unwilling to leave Angus alone for even an hour or so. Angus had known that Taako was affected by it, but now he wondered how much Taako was hiding even now.

There wasn’t much time to dwell on that, however, because Taako was preparing to leave, and Angus wanted to take full advantage of the time he had alone with Kravitz to figure out as much of the Lup and Barry situation as he could.

“Are Lup and Barry in trouble with the Raven Queen?” Angus asked, the instant the front door closed behind Taako.

Kravitz blinked, clearly thrown off guard by the suddenness of the question. “Um, oh, I did ask her. She said she’ll have to consider it, and that she will not let them exist in jar form forever. But as long as they end up in the Astral Plane around the same time that they naturally would have died, I think they'll probably be fine.”

Angus had been so determined to make sure Lup and Barry weren't in any trouble, that Kravitz’s news didn’t even bring him relief. He was just glad that he wouldn’t have to force Kravitz to take him to the Queen so he could argue against her verdict in person. 

“Is there—do you think there’s a way they could be remembered by everyone else again?” he asked.

“If we’re having this conversation now, I’m going to bring them here,” Kravitz said, standing up from the armchair. “They’ll be able to explain it much better than I could.”

He pulled out his scythe from what seemed like thin air, though Angus would guess that it was the ethereal plane, or maybe some kind of pocket dimension. Then he cut a doorway to the Astral Plane. Now that Angus wasn’t seeing it through a grainy security feed and wasn’t distracted by having just been pulled out of danger, he could observe the process properly. 

It looked really cool, but Angus couldn't draw any conclusions from it. He would have to ask one of the IPRE about the science behind it the next time he got the chance.

Kravitz was back in less than a minute, two empty glass jars in his hand. He set them on the coffee table in front of Angus and joined him on the couch.

“Hello, ma’am, sirs!” Angus greeted. The moment he spoke, a doubtful part of his mind wondered if Kravitz might be playing a prank on him and they were just normal jars. Talking to inanimate objects like that would look pretty silly.

“I remember this place...” Lup said slowly, breaking that fear. “This is Taako’s apartment. What are we doing here?”

“Taako’s not here right now,” Kravitz said in a tone meant to reassure. “We wanted to talk and figure out how to resolve your whole situation.”

“Yeah, but why are we  _ here _ ?” Barry said. “Don’t you have a place of your own?”

“Not on this plane of existence,” Kravitz said.

“What about the boy detective?” Lup asked. “Where does he live?”

Angus thought grumpily to himself about reductive titles, but he didn’t voice any of it out loud. “I live here, ma’am!”

There was a beat of silence.

“Didn’t you say Taako was your  _ teacher _ ?” Barry asked.

“He was!” Angus said, realizing too late that he had never really elaborated on their exact relationship. “But then my grandfather died, and he adopted me.”

“Angus!” Lup yelled so loudly that he flinched. “How could you not tell me this? I’m your aunt, and I didn’t even know?!”

“I...” Angus wasn’t sure what to say. If he was honest, he hadn’t even thought about the fact that being Taako’s sister would make Lup his aunt. Taako was so different from Angus’s birth parents, and even though Angus loved him greatly, he never really thought of Taako as his dad. Taako had always been too  _ Taako _ to match Angus's expectation of a parent.

Angus looked down. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I forgot about that.”

“I never thought that  _ Taako _ would have a kid before me!” Lup said. Even though she sounded amused, Angus could recognize the hollowness of her humor from all the times Taako had acted similarly. While Lup was stuck in a jar and erased from the world, she had missed so much, not only of her own life but the lives of all her friends and family as well. Returning back to it, only to discover a new family member was there had to be a shock.

“Any other secret relations that you haven’t told us about yet?” Barry asked dryly.

“Uh, I did mention I’m Taako’s boyfriend, right?” Kravitz said.

“WHAT THE ABSOLUTE FUCK,” Lup bellowed.

“Shit,” Kravitz muttered quietly, and Barry burst into laughter.

“Just kidding,” Lup said, cackling a little. “You brought it up, but there was too much going on for me to respond properly then. But that’s what I would have said to you if I had the chance.”

“And I told them both before you rescued me,” Angus added.

“Yeah, whatever,” Lup said, somehow giving the impression that she was rolling her eyes.

Kravitz cleared his throat. “Um, anyway, I brought you here for a reason? Taako’s out shopping, but he won’t take forever. I’d like to have something figured out by then.”

“Right,” Lup said more quietly. “Sounds like a plan.”

“From what I can tell, there are only three big problems!” Angus said. “You need to make people remember you again, you need some sort of body that can die eventually, and you need to be able to properly use those bodies.”

“Well, we can fix the memory thing,” Lup said. “Barry and I paid close attention when we were being erased, and we’re pretty sure we can reverse it with the right materials. Plus we're quite the expert on souls.”

“How exactly did they erase you?” Angus asked. When Barry and Lup explained everything the day before, they hadn’t gone into as much detail as he would have liked. There hadn’t been time to ask for more information then, so he was leaping on the opportunity now. “Why can I even think of you and remember talking to you yesterday?”

“From what we could tell, they only affected already existing bonds,” Barry said. “We can build new ones, even with people who we used to have bonds with like Taako and the rest of the IPRE. The magic Lydia and Edward did to erase us was pretty sloppy, though considering the nature of bonds, even that is extremely impressive.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate it more if they didn’t steal our lives for five years,” Lup muttered. “Anyway, fixing the bond thing is easy. Getting a body is a bit trickier though.”

“Is it even possible?” Barry asked. “Edward and Lydia worked on it for years with nothing to show.”

“Why  _ did _ it take them over five years?” Angus asked. With all the other leaps in science and magic that Lydia and Edward had made, he wouldn’t have thought this part would be the one that tripped them up.

“This stuff isn’t supposed to be easy,” Kravitz said. “That kind of necromancy goes against the nature of the universe. Souls don’t fit into new vessels very well. The jars only work because Lup and Barry have no physical effect on the world.”

“But there has to be something we can still do, right?” Angus pleaded. They couldn’t give up hope now, not after everything that had happened, no matter how scientifically impossible it seemed. Being forced to the Astral Plane when Lup and Barry had just gotten the chance to return to their lives would be too cruel to imagine.

“With my help, it might work,” Kravitz said. “You pick up stuff when you spend a few centuries working for the Raven Queen, plus I have magic that Lydia and Edward didn't. There’s a decent chance that we could figure something out.”

“So then all you need is a body!” Angus said, latching onto this hope, even though Kravitz had given no guarantee that his plan would definitely work.

“I wonder—do you think the IPRE could grow an entire body?” Barry asked. “When we were taken, Merle was looking into prosthetics made using the person’s cells, and Davenport was researching growing organs.”

“One problem with that, babe,” Lup said. “They’d need our DNA, and we don’t exactly have that anymore.”

“There’s nothing?” Barry asked. “Don’t we have some samples in the lab or something?”

Kravitz shook his head. “I don’t know for certain, but Edward and Lydia were pretty thorough when it came to erasing your presence there. I doubt there’s anything left.”

“Oh wait!” Angus said, remembering one of his clues. “I found a hair in Taako’s cookbook. I knew it wasn’t his, and I assume that means it wasn’t yours either, Ms. Lup, but it might be Barry’s? Would that have enough DNA?”

“We’ll probably have to check with the IPRE to see what they’re capable of now, but I think a hair would work,” Barry said. “Can I see it to make sure it’s actually mine?”

“Of course!” Angus said, jumping up from the couch and dashing into his room to find the ziploc bag he had placed it in.

When he returned to the main room, Kravitz was quietly saying, “—can’t do this again, you know. Making a new body has to be a one time thing, and you’ll have to destroy the technology afterwards.”

“But there’s so much potential—” Barry started.

“The Raven Queen won’t allow people to just switch bodies whenever they feel like it. This is the one exception, and she’s only letting it happen because Lydia and Edward weren’t supposed to remove your souls like that in the first place.”

“So replacing limbs and organs is fine, but whole bodies aren’t? Where do you draw the line then?” Lup demanded.

Kravitz looked away uncomfortably, his eyes landing on Angus who was standing right outside his bedroom door. “Let’s discuss the specifics another time. We don’t even know if this will work yet.”

Feeling like he needed to move the conversation along before things got more tense, Angus held up the bag, walking closer to the jars on the coffee table. “Here it is, sir!”

“That looks like mine,” Barry said after a brief moment. “But we’ll have to do some tests on it first, just to be sure.”

“What about Lup?” Kravitz asked.

“It’s been five years,” Lup said. “Assuming our apartment has been cleared out, I don’t know where you’d find anything of mine.”

“But I’m a detective. There has to be  _ something _ !” Angus tried, his mind already racing through the possibilities. There must be some other place that Lup went to often when she was still alive, someplace that wouldn’t have erased all traces of her in five years. It seemed too unfair that Lup was so close to having a life again only to lose her chance over something so simple. He refused to give up. “I could—”

“Don’t sweat it, my dude,” Lup said. “I... I already have an idea.”

“What?” Angus asked, wondering why there was a certain heaviness to Lup’s tone.

“Taako and I are identical twins. We have the same DNA. I’ll have to go through transitioning again, but I guess that’s a relatively small sacrifice in comparison,” Lup said with a small sigh.

“I know the IPRE has made some progress on that in the last five years,” Angus offered, remembering the time soon after Taako adopted him that he searched through the IPRE records for all the trans-related research they had done. “Not that it’s easy even now, but hopefully it will be better than the first time!”

“Seeing as it’s been over a decade since I’ve done most of my physical transitioning, I certainly hope so,” Lup muttered. “But I’m not too worried. If we’re creating new bodies from scratch, I’m sure that making a few modifications won’t be hard.” 

“Oh right,” Angus said.

“Anyway, there are more immediate concerns,” Lup continued. “How are we going to break this whole situation to Taako and the rest?”

“I suppose that would depend on how fast we can break the memory spell and how soon you want them to know,” Kravitz said.

“Now,” Lup said without hesitation. “I’ve been forgotten for five years; it’s about time somebody can remember me.”

“The bond spell won't take too long to prepare,” Barry added. “Especially if Kravitz uses his reaper powers to grab some supplies, we could probably have it ready to go before Taako gets back, though it would take another hour to actually cast it.”

“I’m not leaving Angus here alone,” Kravitz said immediately. “And I don’t want Taako to come back here and find us both gone. He trusted me with keeping Angus safe, and I won’t let him down.”

Which confirmed Angus’s earlier suspicions, not that he needed it. This sort of overprotectiveness was out of character enough for Taako that he didn’t bother protesting that he would be fine alone in the apartment for a little while. Angus didn’t want to worry Taako anymore than he already had.

“Then I guess we wait for him to come back?” Barry suggested. “It’s probably a good idea anyway. We might want to give all the people we were important to some warning before they just start getting memories out of nowhere.”

“Hmm, fair enough,” Lup said.

“There’s only really the IPRE though, right?” Barry asked.

“Fortunately we were a tight-knit bunch of losers,” Lup said. “Few outside friends to speak of. At least few who would still be strongly impacted by their memories of us returning five years later.”

‘Tight-knit’ didn’t seem to really describe the current IPRE, what with Julia, and Merle’s kids, and Ren, and Lucretia’s six member Lesbian Literature Society, and Johann, and Avi, and all the rest. Angus wondered how much of that had been changed since Lup and Barry were taken away and how much was simply that those particular people were not particularly close to Lup and Barry.

“That’s good. Fewer people to worry about,” Kravitz said. 

“What about the scientists from the Miller Labs?” Angus asked. “And all the other people Lydia and Edward kidnapped and erased? Are we going to do all this for them too?”

Kravitz opened his mouth, but then he hesitated and closed it again.

A ball of anxiety dropped into Angus’s stomach. “What is it?”

“It’s...” Kravitz glanced Lup and Barry, but they remained as unresponsive as any regular jars were. “I don’t know where they are. Their souls still haven't showed up in the Astral Plane, but they weren’t in the building I found you in either.”

“What happened?!” Angus asked, horrified. Had their souls had been destroyed forever? Was that even possible?

“I don’t know,” Kravitz said helplessly. “I’m planning on searching for them, but right now, I know noth—” He stopped abruptly as the lock to the front door turned with a click.

Angus spun around to face the entry way. The paranoia of everyone around him must have gotten to him because his heart began to speed up. The logical thought would be that it was Taako returning from his shopping, but part of Angus tensed in preparation for an attack of some sort.

The door swung open, revealing Taako, bags full of groceries on each arm. “Hey, someone help me with this shit!”

“Okay!” Angus said, darting to take one of the bags and carry it to the kitchen. He looked back into the living room where the two jam jars were still on the coffee table. Next to them, Kravitz had stood up and was looking around him in a vaguely panicked manner, as if trying to find a place to hide them in the next couple of seconds.

More preoccupied with putting the groceries into the fridge, Taako didn’t appear to have noticed them, but it would only be a matter of time. It might be better to have the reveal over with as soon as possible, but that wasn’t Angus’s decision to make.

“What—what are you planning to make for dinner, sir?” Angus asked, hoping to keep Taako’s attention on him a little longer. Lup and Barry deserved at least a bit of time to make any decisions.

Taako set down the eggs, whirling around to face Angus with narrowed eyes. “You sound suspicious. Are you hiding something?”

“Wh-what?” Angus squeaked, his heart pounding wildly. “Of—of course not, sir!” He tried to grin innocently

“Hmm...” Taako said, staring intensely at Angus for a moment before turning back away. “You’ve got to work on your lying, kiddo.”

Angus figured that not responding was probably his best option, and continued to hand Taako vegetables one by one to place into the fridge.

“So what are those jars over there doing?” Taako asked once they were finished, closing the fridge door and walking into the living room to get a better look at them. “Don’t pretend like I can’t see you watching them like they’re going to run away at any second.”

“Uh...” Kravitz said, his mouth starting to move in different shapes as he cast around for something to say. “They’re from Lydia and Edward’s place.”

Taako froze. “Are they dangerous?” he asked, a note of warning entering his voice.

“No, I’d never bring something like that here!” Kravitz said quickly. “They... well, uh...”

“Hey, Taako,” Lup said quietly. “Long time no see.”

Angus quickly looked up to see what Taako was doing, wondering if any part of his subconscious would recognize her voice. He wanted to believe that there was some sort of connection between the twins that would transcend even bond magic and cause Taako to remember how important Lup was to him, but he knew it wasn’t likely.

“Fuck!” Taako exclaimed, jumping a little, his hand flying to his wand. His eyes were wide, but Angus couldn’t tell if it was just from being startled or something more. “That thing can talk?”

“You really don’t remember me, do you,” Lup said, and Angus had never heard her sound more lifeless.

“Should I?” Taako asked. There was tension in the way he held himself, something almost defensive in the slight hunch of his shoulders. He looked up from the jar to Kravitz. “What is that?”

“Taako,” Kravitz said, and Angus wasn’t sure if he really sounded like he was trying to tactfully stop Taako from hurting Lup and Barry by flaunting his lack of recognition, or if it was just Angus projecting his feelings. “These—They’re souls of people who were kidnapped by Lydia and Edward.”

“This is what Angus would have ended up like, if you hadn’t gotten there first?” Taako demanded.

Even though Angus knew the fury in Taako's eyes was not aimed at anyone in this room, he couldn’t help but shrink back. He was half certain that Taako was about to demand that Kravitz take him to the Astral Plane so he could fight Lydia and Edward himself.

“Something like that,” Kravitz said. “But Taako...” He trailed off uncertainly.

“They took more than just our bodies from us,” Barry said, causing Taako to flinch.

“Oh, there’s two of you?” Taako said, his voice pitched higher than normal.

“What did you think, dingus?” Lup asked lightly, the severity of the situation only given away by a slight tremble in her voice. “There are  _ two _ jars here.”

“Well, I hope you get all your stuff back,” Taako said, a slight edge of hysteria in the way he was almost smiling. “If there’s—if I can help, give me a shout, but I’m just a scientist, so there probably won’t be anything. I—I’ll just leave you to it!”

He turned back into the kitchen, grabbing a handful of dishes from the drainer and began putting them away. The apartment wasn’t big enough for that to make much of a difference. He was still within hearing distance and eyeshot of everybody else, though the clattering of the dishes might be enough to drown out anything anybody else said.

Angus looked at Kravitz, trying to project the message  _ What do we do now? _ as hard as he could through body language alone. Kravitz gave a helpless shrug.

“Taako...” Barry said when Taako turned back to the drainer to grab some more dishes.

“Uh, yeah?” Taako froze, still facing the other wall. “That’s me. Don’t know why you all seem to know my name, but that’s cool.”

This conversation was dragging out painfully slowly, and Angus wanted to move it along so it wouldn’t last forever. He was sure that as agonizing as it was for him, it was nothing compared to what Lup and Barry were feeling. If he brought up how Lydia and Edward wiped the people they captured from everybody’s memory, maybe that could lead to who exactly Lup and Barry were.

But before Angus could say anything, Lup sighed. “I’m your twin sister who you forgot about, Taako!”

He spun around to face them. “What—what are you talking about?!”

“Uh, Taako?” Kravitz said, his hands spread out placatingly. “This—Lydia and Edward—they didn’t just, uh—“

Angus cut in, hoping he correctly remembered what Magnus had told him. “You know when Lucretia researched memory a couple years ago?”

“Yes?” Taako said. “What does that have to do with—“

“And how she found that bonds are connected to memory?” Angus pressed on.

“Look,” Taako said. “If Lucretia was trying to take credit for that discovery, then she’s got another thing coming.”

“Yeah,” Barry muttered. “We knew about that long before we were taken, and it wasn’t Lucretia who did that.”

He was pretty sure Lucretia  _ had  _ said something along the lines of her research simply backing up already existing theories, but it wasn’t the point of this, so Angus just ignored it. “Well, Lydia and Edward knew that too, and they managed to use a spell to erase the existence of Lup and Barry from everybody’s minds.”

“And you’re saying that Lup is my sister that I was forced to forget,” Taako said flatly.

“Yes!” Lup said.

“That can’t be!” Taako said. “I—I’ve never—I would know I had a twin, wouldn’t I? Even if those bastards took the memories away from me, I would just  _ know _ , right?”

Kravitz shook his head. “This is heavy magic, Taako. You wouldn't be able to know.”

“Except you sort of do, don’t you?” Angus pleaded. “When you saw Lup and Barry’s names in that cookbook, you got so upset! And that key you wouldn’t throw away? And the time you told the story about shoplifting an umbrella but couldn’t remember how it ended?”

“But…” Taako said. “I… I’ve always been alone! It’s always just been me against the world!”

“Taako...” Lup said, sounding on the verge of tears.

“Hey,” Barry said, and he almost sounded like he had a grip on his emotions. “Why don’t we all try to calm down? We know how to lift the spell that wiped us out of people’s memories. Let’s finish this conversation after that.”

Taako took a deep breath, pacing to the other side of the room. “Okay. I hope you’re wrong, because I—I don’t want to have had that and lost it, you know? But, uh, maybe it would be better if I don’t get in your way.” Then he darted to his bedroom, closing the door tightly shut behind him.

Angus was horribly reminded of the incident with the cookbook just over a week ago. He wasn’t alone this time, and he knew that there was a way to fix this, but that wasn’t as big of a reassurance as he would have hoped it would be.

“Fuck,” Lup muttered.

“I’m going to go after him,” Kravitz said, his body already angled toward where Taako had disappeared. “I’ll be back to help with everything, but I—I have to make sure he’s okay.” He walked over to Taako’s door and softly knocked on it.

A few moments later, the door opened, and Angus could see a flash of bleached blond hair, then Kravitz disappeared inside. 

It was good that Taako had someone with him and that he seemed to trust Kravitz enough to let him be that person, but Angus still felt a cold sense of emptiness. He knew that the first step was to make everyone remember Lup and Barry again, but he didn’t know how to start moving forward, and his only help were two ghosts that he didn’t even know very well.

“Will it—do you think it’ll be okay?” Angus asked, his voice coming out more fragile than he would have liked.

“I think that Taako is unsettled,” Barry said. “We’re telling him things that don’t match up with his world view, and there is just enough of him that recognizes what was taken from him for it to really suck.”

Angus would have felt much better if it sounded less like Barry was trying to reassure himself just as much as Angus, but he would take what he could get.

“Yeah, well it’s not really fun for us either, so let’s we get started on that memory spell, yeah?” Lup said.

Angus knew that he would not be able to get the materials necessary for the spell unless they could be found within the apartment. Taako and Kravitz were busy, and Lup and Barry were incorporeal, so he would have to find someone else to get everything together.

Did any of the IPRE have their day off today? Angus wondered. It was Thursday, which seemed completely bizarre because Wednesday felt so long ago that it might as well be in a different lifetime. Thursdays were Magnus days, so he wouldn’t be at work today, and he would probably be willing to lend a hand.

“I think I can get someone to help,” Angus said, taking out his phone.

“Is that what the newest phones look like these days?” Barry asked, sounding almost amused. “Funny all those little changes. I guess that’s another thing we’ll have to get used to.”

“Uh, yeah!” Angus said, not sure how to respond to that. To give a sort of excuse for not properly replying, Angus quickly pulled up the phone app to make the call.

“Who’re you calling?” Lup asked as Angus waited for Magnus to pick up.

“Magnus,” he said.

“Uh, hello?” came the muffled voice on the other end. “Angus? How’s it going? Is everything alright?”

“It’s better,” Angus said truthfully. He wasn’t sure if he could go so far to say that  _ everything _ was good, but he didn’t want to dwell on the negatives. “I need some help.”

“Sure, what’s going on?”

Angus began to explain the situation, what Lydia and Edward had done with their victims, how Lup and Barry used to work for the IPRE. When Angus started explaining that last part, Magnus didn’t interrupt once. Even when Angus finished, he remained quiet.

“Are you okay?” Angus asked after a long pause, hoping that he hadn’t made Magnus feel as bad as Taako clearly did. “Do you believe me?”

“It—it’s hard to take in,” Magnus said. “But you’re the best detective, so if you say so, I trust you.”

“That means a lot, sir!” Angus said. He wished the situation wasn’t quite so dire so he could properly revel in that compliment, but even still, he couldn’t stop himself from grinning just a bit.

“Is there a way we can remember them again?” Magnus asked.

“Yeah!” Angus said. “That’s what we’re working on! Lup and Barry have something figured out. I’ll put them on speaker phone.”

He set the phone on the coffee table next to Lup and Barry. “Okay, now Magnus can hear all of us.”

“Uh, hi, Magnus,” Barry said. He was a little quieter than normal.

“Hey you two!” Magnus said. “Quick question: is this going to need magic? Because I should probably get someone else involved if it does. I don’t have magic.”

“Yeah, we know,” Lup said, sounding amused. “The memory stuff only goes one way. We remember stuff about you still.”

“Right!” Magnus said. “This is awkward!”

“There’s nothing like pointing out a situation is awkward to make it better,” came Merle’s faint and tinny voice, and Angus realized that Magnus must be at work, even though it was a Thursday. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, good you’re here! I think we’re going to need some magic,” Magnus said.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Merle demanded, his voice now coming through much clearer. Magnus had probably switched to speaker phone on his end too.

“Oh, you know,” Magnus said. “Me, Angus, and a couple of old coworkers we were magically made to forget about.”

There was a beat of silence. “Fair enough. What do you need the magic for?”

“To help you remember we exist,” Barry said.

“Though with that old man brain of his, I’m not sure that’s possible for Merle,” Lup muttered, and Magnus laughed.

Angus watched as the four of them began discussing plans for casting the spell. It was odd to listen to these strangers fit into Magnus and Merle’s usual banter as smoothly as if they had known each other for years. Even though Lup and Barry  _ had _ known Magnus and Merle for years, the reverse was not true. But beyond a bit of initial uncertainty, the imbalance of their dynamic was practically invisible.

It was comforting in a way. After Taako’s reaction, Angus had been starting to feel like there was no way this situation could have any ending that was better than ‘not terrible.’

Now, there seemed to be hope in Merle’s easy acceptance of the unbelievable and Magnus’s light-hearted jokes. Lup and Barry seemed to warm up to this comfortable atmosphere too, and the tension that had been present in the apartment all day was starting to evaporate. Maybe this all  _ could  _ have a happy ending.

After the spell’s material components and steps were described, Lup added, “But we can go over this again once we’re there.”

“Wait what?” Magnus asked suddenly. “What spell were you talking about? I was dozing off, and Merle sure as hell didn’t write anything down.”

There was a tense moment of silence before Lup burst out laughing, Barry following suit.

“For a moment there, I thought you were serious, Mags!” Lup said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! I am  _ completely _ serious,” Magnus said, but Angus could hear the grin in his voice.

“Yeah, Magnus took notes,” Merle confirmed.

“I’d forgotten how often you pretended not to pay attention like that,” Barry said as his chuckles died down.

“I guess we’re not the only ones who’ll be remembering stuff about each other!” Magnus said.

“You should probably let Lucretia and Davenport know that they’ll suddenly have memories about two people they currently know nothing about,” Lup said. “That’d be a nasty shock.”

“Yeah, okay, we’ll let them know and get all the stuff you need,” Magnus said. “I can probably send Davenport to pick up the two of you.”

“Awesome,” Lup said. “We’ll let you get to it then.”

“See ya,” Merle said.

“You two seem really cool!” Magnus said. “I can’t wait to remember you again!”

“Oh,” Lup said, sounding caught off guard. “Thank you.”

“I can’t wait for you to remember us either,” Barry said.

“Goodbye, sirs!” Angus chimed in.

“Take care of yourself, Ango,” Magnus said. “Don’t get kidnapped again!”

“I’ll try!” Angus said, pressing the end call button. The reminder of his kidnapping was not a pleasant one, and he sort of wanted to run away from the memory of it. That being impossible, ending the conversation with Magnus was the best he could do.

“Damn, it was nice to hear from those chucklefucks again,” Lup said.

“I never thought I would be so happy to hear their voices,” Barry said with a snort. “Though to be fair, there was a point where I thought I would never hear them again, so I guess this is definitely better.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds a bit more reasonable,” Lup said with a laugh. “I bet that Davenport shows up in exactly fourteen minutes.”

“Seventeen minutes,” Barry said. “It always takes Magnus and Merle forever to do anything.”

“Yeah, but Davenport drives crazy fast,” Lup countered. “That hasn’t changed, has it, Angus?”

“No, ma’am!” Angus said, remembering the last time he had ridden in a car with Davenport. It would have been terrifying except Davenport had been so skilled at manoeuvring that it almost was exhilarating.

“Okay, but seriously,” Lup said. “What’s with all the ma’ams and sirs? We’re your family kiddo. You can drop the formalities.”

“Uh,” Angus said. “It’s a fun little goof I do! My signature goof!”

“How did that come about?” Barry asked. “Sounds like a weird goof to not have a story behind it.”

“Well...” Angus said, scratching the back of his head. It was sort of embarrassing. “Nobody knows the full story yet, so you have to keep it secret, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Lup said. “I’m not sure whether I should be worried or amused at this point, but continue.”

“I grew up with a pretty rich family,” Angus began. “So all the other adults I knew were very important, so I had to call them sir and ma’am. I just thought that was normal. But then I came to live with Taako, and all the IPRE thought it was really funny? Even after I figured it wasn’t necessary, I didn’t know how to stop without it being awkward.”

Lup burst out laughing, and Angus was pretty sure he could hear a couple quieter chuckles from Barry. Angus looked down, cheeks starting to heat up. He knew it was silly, which that was why he had never told anybody. He was starting to wish he hadn’t said anything.

“Angus,” Lup said. “My  _ dude _ . You’ve gotta say something! You can’t just let that go on forever!”

“I promise,” Barry said. “She only says that from having seen something similar first hand.”

“What?” Angus asked.

“Mr. Bluejeans over here,” Lup started before she dissolved into more laughter. “Mr. Bluejeans,” she repeated. “That’s so dumb! I don’t know how I ever thought you were for real.”

“I, uh, accidentally made the IPRE think my last name was Bluejeans,” Barry said. “Then I didn’t correct them for three years because social anxiety.”

Angus couldn’t help but giggle a little. That was a truly ridiculous lie to believe.

“Yeah, learn from his mistakes, Angus,” Lup said, the grin obvious in her voice. “Don’t dig yourself in deeper.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll just continue my plan,” Angus said.

“What’s that?” Barry asked.

“Slowly use formalities less and less until nobody even notices that I’ve stopped!” Angus said, unable to stop his grin.

Both Lup and Barry laughed at that, and Angus felt his heart grow lighter. He had only ever lived without the two of them, but despite whatever weird changes their appearance would cause in his life, he was really glad they were going to be in it now.

In the end, nobody won that bet, though Lup was the closest. The doorbell rang thirteen minutes after the end of the phone conversation.

“He must be really excited about this,” Lup muttered.

“To be fair, this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day,” Barry said.

“That’s us, darling,” Lup said. “A once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Who’s that?” Taako asked. He poked his head out of his room, his usually braided hair hanging limply around his face. And just like that, the lightness in the air vanished. Lup and Barry were silent, and Angus didn’t even know what he could possibly do or say to make anything even a little less uncomfortable for all of them.

“It’s probably Davenport!” Angus said, trying to lift the mood with a bit of excitement. He only succeeded in sounding awkwardly out of place. He raced to the door, pulling it open to reveal that it was indeed Davenport.

“Hello, Angus,” Davenport said as Angus let him inside. “How are you—”

“I’m doing fine, sir!” Angus said. He knew people were justifiably concerned after his kidnapping, but he was already tired of that same expression on every single person he had seen in the past twelve hours.

“Good,” Davenport said. “So what exactly is going on? Magnus and Merle barely explained anything.”

“I can tell you,” Kravitz said, walking around Taako to the front door and launching into an explanation.

Taako sat on the armchair across the room from the jars. He stared blankly at the carpet in front of him, but Angus was pretty sure he was listening to Kravitz talk.

It didn’t take long for Kravitz to finish up, and for Davenport to take Lup and Barry and head on his way. He was clearly eager to see this through as quickly as possible.

Angus didn’t blame him. The living room was filled with thick tension, and he wasn’t quite certain how to broach any topic at all. Should he remain quiet and let Taako try to process things? Should he talk about the whole Lup/Barry/kidnapping situation? Or talk about something completely unrelated? The wait was taking forever, and five minutes hadn’t even passed yet. He couldn’t fathom how long the hour or so it would take for the spell to be cast would feel.

“Taako?” he tried eventually.

“Sup, kiddo?” Taako asked.

“It’s almost noon—should I make lunch?” Angus asked. He wasn’t all that hungry, with his late breakfast and his stomach in tangles, but he wanted to be doing something.

“Oh yeah,” Taako said, glancing at the clock. “You know what? I think I’ll join you. How long did you say the spell would take—an hour? Let’s make some doria.”

Between the time it would take to cook the rice and then melt the cheese on top of that, it would take just over an hour to cook, no matter how quickly they cut up the meat and vegetables to go in the dish. Angus was sure that wasn’t accidental.

“You in, skull man?” Taako asked. “I’m sure even you couldn’t mess up peeling carrots, even if it’s been like a thousand years since you last cooked or whatever.”

“Uh, I’ll try,” Kravitz said. “And I’m not quite  _ that _ old.”

“Well how old  _ are _ you then?” Taako asked as he jumped up to search the fridge.

“What a rude question to ask your partner!” Kravitz said, placing his hand on his chest in exaggerated offense.

“Well, he said he grew up in Phandalin,” Angus chimed in. “If that’s true, he would have to be somewhere between 400 and 100 years old!”

Kravitz looked at Angus as Taako cackled. “I can’t slip anything past you, can I?”

Angus merely grinned.

The rest of the time passed far more quickly. It wasn’t what Angus would consider relaxed, but considering the circumstances, it was a lot nicer than he would have expected. In a less stressful time, Angus was pretty sure that cooking with both Taako and Kravitz would be really fun.

The oven had just begun to beep when Angus’s cell phone rang. The caller id read Magnus, so he answered, fumbling to hit the button to accept the call as fast as possible.

“Hey, Ango,” Magnus said. “We’re pretty sure that Lucretia’s almost finished with the spell, so I thought I’d let you know that Taako’ll probably be getting his memories back pretty soon.”

“Okay!” Angus said. It hit him then, like a stone dropping into his stomach, that this was  _ real _ . Taako’s life was about to be reshaped, and by extension, so was his. Everything had happened so fast that Angus hadn’t even considered what remembering Lup and Barry might mean in terms of real life consequences.

Taako would have a sister again; his memories of growing up alone would be revised. The circle of adults taking care of Angus would grow bigger. Almost everyone in Angus’s life would suddenly be close to two people Angus had only known for a couple of days. These changes didn’t sound bad, not over all, but it still frightened him.

“Is he doing okay?” Magnus asked.

“I think so,” Angus said, glancing over at Taako who was watching Angus from beside the still-open oven door. “I hope it goes well!!”

“Yeah, me too,” Magnus said. “I’ll see you on the other side.” Then he hung up.

“It’s about to happen, isn’t it,” Taako said.

Angus nodded.

“You know what’s funny?” Taako said. “I can’t even tell if I should be excited for this or not. If you’re right—and I’m not entirely convinced of that yet—then part of who I am is ending, and I don’t know if it even matters since it was fake this whole time.”

“You aren’t fake, Taako,” Kravitz said.

“Thank you, person who's known me for three weeks. I'm sure you know exactly how real I am,” Taako said, his voice cracking.

“I’m a reaper,” Kravitz said. “I’ve seen people build their identities off physical things—their bodies, their possessions, their wealth—and then lose it all. But they’re still always them. You aren’t fake, just a different version than how you might have been if things had gone a different way.”

“That’s real helpful,” Taako said sarcastically, but his voice sounded a little steadier.

“Well—” Kravitz started.

“Fuck,” Taako said, his expression dropping and hands stilling. Angus instantly knew that Taako was remembering.

There was a long moment. Angus couldn’t move, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even think; he was just frozen in place as he stared at Taako. There were no dramatics for Taako, just a wide-eyed shakiness that seemed to last for an eternity, though in reality was probably only a few seconds.

The world held still in anticipation, though for what, Angus could not tell. Everything had just changed, and time seemed to falter like the moment in a cartoon where a character had just stepped off a cliff but had yet to realize the consequences. What was done was done, but Angus couldn’t see which way the pieces were falling yet, and the suspense pulsed with every strained heartbeat.

“I—” Taako finally said, and Angus could breathe again, could unfreeze, could glance over at Kravitz to see the same uncertain expression that Angus was sure he was wearing.

“Taako?” Angus asked hesitantly. There were a thousand things he wanted to know, but he could only manage that one word.

Taako sprang out of his chair with a suddenness that made Angus jump, his eyes fixed on Kravitz. “Get me to the Astral Plane. I’m going to  _ fucking murder _ Edward and Lydia a thousand fucking times.” There was something cold and deadly in his voice that made Angus want to curl up and cry. He didn’t sound like the person who cooked treats with Angus and taught him magic and always made sure he never was left alone for long.

“Taako—” Kravitz said, his voice cracking. Angus hadn’t realized a name could hold so much emotion until that moment. “I—I can’t do that.”

“They stole  _ my heart _ ,” Taako said. He was shaking, and tears were starting to run down his cheeks. “Lup was  _ everything _ , and they took that away from me.”

“But she’s back now,” Angus tried. “Her and Barry. And it isn’t the same, but they aren’t gone anymore. You can go see them right now.”

“I—I can get us there now,” Kravitz said quickly. “Unless you’d rather have a moment to yourself?”

“No,” Taako said instantly. “I need to see them.”

“Okay.”

As Kravitz materialized his scythe, Angus remembered what Kravitz had said the night before, about taking mortals to the Astral Plane being against the ‘guidelines’ except under special circumstances. Breaking a rule twice in as many days seemed like a bad idea, but a glance at Taako’s expression was enough to show that this was special circumstances. Angus had never seen someone who had lost and gained so much in the same moment.

Kravitz took a step toward the portal he created then reached his hand out for Taako to take. After staring at it blankly for a second, Taako placed his hand in Kravitz’s. On Taako’s other side, Angus reached up to grab his other hand, wanting both to offer and receive comfort.

“Ready?” Kravitz asked.

“Yeah,” Taako said, not boisterous or loud, but certain all the same.

Angus nodded, even though he still didn’t love the idea of visiting the afterlife before it was absolutely necessary.

Hand in hand, the three of them stepped into the Astral Plane.

This time, with his eyes open, Angus could see that they were standing on an island with an enormous fortress on it. Lapping at its shores was a sort of ocean of swirling lights. Not a lot of sound was being made, but it was all so echo-y that it was far from silent.

Kravitz swung his scythe again and brought the three of them into the IPRE lab.

The main room was a mess. Even though Magnus and Davenport were currently in the process of cleaning it up, it was very clear that someone had thrown together a ritual in a hurry. Ingredients and spell components were scattered everywhere, and the chalk on the ground had not yet been rubbed off.

Lucretia was staring wide-eyed at the two jars in the center of everything, while Merle seemed to be in the middle of an animated conversation with them. None of the living IPRE seemed to notice the arrival of the three of them, but Angus had barely stepped onto the tiled floor when he heard Lup’s voice.

“Taako?”

Instantly everyone paused, even Kravitz who had been tucking away his scythe, and watched as Taako released Angus and Kravitz to rush over to the jars, placing a hand on top of each of them.

“Hey...” he said, his voice trembling.

“I heard you’re dating the Grim Reaper and that you adopted a detective? Is this what happens when I leave you alone for five minutes?” Lup asked.

Taako burst into giggles, though Angus could see a tear glint on his cheek. “Fuck, Lulu. I missed you so much.”

“Me too,” Lup said, her voice turning softer.

“If you weren’t stuck in a jar, I would be hugging you forever,” Taako whispered.

“Why should you let that stop you?” Barry asked, his tone too fragile to be amused.

Taako laughed again and picked up both jars cradling them to his chest.

“Group hug!” Magnus shouted, rushing forward to embrace all three of them. “Come on, you guys!”

Lucretia stood up, brushing away a tear, and hesitantly wrapped an arm around Magnus and Taako.

“I guess we’re doing this,” Merle muttered, but he didn’t seem too upset as he hugged Lucretia and Taako, his arms barely reaching their waists. He turned his head away from them to face everybody else. “Look, if I’m doing this, you three had better too.”

Angus ran forward, and within moments, he was crowded between Magnus, Taako, and Kravitz. It was sort of uncomfortable, being squished between people who were much taller than him, but Angus couldn’t bring himself to mind.

For the first time in his life, his family was whole again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m very sorry for being so late!  
> The next parts are much shorter, so hopefully it’ll take less long for me to get them out. There will be a Merle Interlude and an epilogue, and that’s the end of this part of the story. I have plans for something that takes place after all this from Kravitz’s pov, and I’m not ruling out the possibility of more short stories in this universe from other people’s pov, though I don’t have anything else specifically planned out.  
> Thank you for reading this and especially for all the kind comments!!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Recovery and new beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the end at last!

Angus went back to school the next Monday. 

With all the concern and interest he got from his classmates and teachers, the first day made Angus want to move to the moon and never return. Everyone wanted to know more about why he was gone, what happened to him, how he was doing, was it true that he had battled life-sucking demons? Angus hated the intensity of the attention he was receiving. 

But as the days passed and rumors of a less interesting story spread around, the buzz died down, and life went back to almost normal. Which was weird because so much had changed.

Every morning, Angus woke up, went to school, did his homework, and spent his afternoons at various members of the IPRE’s houses. He went to his own home in the evenings and read until it was time to sleep. He baked treats with Taako on Mondays and found various small cases to work on in his spare time. He hung out with June at school, and Mavis and Mookie on the weekends, and exchanged letters with Jimmy. 

This routine was unchanged from how it had been for the past two years.

But there were differences as well. Angus had nightmares, more frequent and grounded in reality than the normal ones before. Taako was in the lab more too, working on growing a body for Lup and Barry. This didn’t mean the apartment felt emptier. Whenever they weren’t at the lab, Lup and Barry hung around in the living room, and suddenly the apartment was twice as full as it had been a mere two weeks before. With Kravitz coming over every other day, it felt like even more.

On Saturdays, Angus went to a therapist to help him process and recover from his kidnapping. Because Brad was one of Avi’s friends, Angus didn’t feel too bad about telling him the whole story, even stuff like Kravitz’s job which was generally supposed to be kept secret (though Kravitz had made it explicitly clear beforehand that Angus’s mental health came far above keeping such secrets).

After the second meeting with his therapist, Angus spent the ride back home in quiet contemplation. Something Brad had mentioned pulled at his mind.

“It seems to me,” Brad had said in that soft, non-judgemental tone of his, “that you often take a lot of responsibility onto yourself. Not every problem has to be fixed by you alone. The true meaning of strength is asking for help.”

It hadn’t really been about the Case of the Soul Stealers, as Angus was now calling the whole business, but his mind couldn’t help but connecting the two.

Looking back, keeping the whole case from Taako hadn’t been a smart idea. Sure, Angus had had his reasons. He didn’t want to unnecessarily put a dent into Taako and Kravitz’s relationship without knowing the full story, and the way Taako had reacted to even the mention of Lup and Barry’s names had discouraged Angus from speaking of that any further.

Still, he could have turned to someone else for help. The entirety of the IPRE would have listened to him and done everything to help him, if he had only bothered to ask.

But it wasn’t the stuff that went badly that Angus found his thoughts swirling around; instead it was the things that had gone right but only by chance. If Kravitz really had been the kind of reaper Angus had first pictured, his not telling anyone before confronting him could have been disastrous. If Angus didn’t have the feather on him when he went to the Miller Labs, he never would have escaped Lydia and Edward. If Taako hadn’t decided to make macaroons that day, Angus never would have known about Lup and Barry and they would still be completely forgotten about.

His mind combed through his recent actions, searching for all the ways asking for help could have made things better, and all the times that it did. If he could find all the mistakes and all the things he hadn’t done perfectly, maybe he wouldn’t get himself into such a dangerous situation the next times. At least it couldn’t hurt.

When Taako and Angus finally arrived back at their apartment, Taako turned to look at Angus, a serious expression on his face.

“How are things going for you?” Taako asked as he sat down on the couch. Angus could tell that this was going to be a whole conversation, so he took a seat on the other side.

“It’s okay,” Angus said truthfully. There were still lots of changes that all of his family were still getting used to, and the pieces hadn’t quite settled yet. He was still adjusting to Lup and Barry’s presence and his new understanding of the afterlife through Kravitz, as well as the marks his kidnapping had left. But at the same time, most of the time he just went on with his life as if this had always been his normal. There was a weird disconnect sometimes when he thought about it too hard, but mostly he didn’t. “How are you doing?”

Taako let a laugh burst out. “Well, I’m exhausted. But at least now I basically have Lup and Barry caught up on the past five years.”

“You shouldn’t stay up so late talking to them,” Angus said. With all the time Taako spent at the lab, working on making the bodies, Angus wasn’t entirely sure that Taako was getting many breaks or chances to rest. “Sleep is important!”

Taako rolled his eyes. “Who’s the parent here, Ango? Being an adult means you get to set your own bed time.”

“Right,” Angus said. He made a mental note to talk to Barry about it. Lup probably wouldn’t be as subtle about getting Taako to sleep more, and Angus didn’t want Taako to know that Angus was meddling with his life.

“But yeah. I’m doing good.” Taako grinned broadly, an expression that was not all that common on him, and Angus immediately felt guilty for scheming to cut down on the time Taako spent with his recently returned sister and friend. “Really good. Me ’n Lucretia figured some stuff out about the blood vessels last night, and I’m starting to think that getting their bodies back might actually be possible.”

“That’s great!!” Angus wasn’t entirely sure what the problem with the blood vessels had been, but if fixing it was enough to make Taako feel optimistic about the whole project, it had to be an important stride.

“Of course, we still haven’t figured out how to how to keep the body from decaying while we work on it, but whatever,” Taako said. “I’ve always wanted to be Frankenstein when I grew up, and I’m not letting these little problems take that away from me.”

“But Frankenstein’s creation started murdering people!” Angus exclaimed.

Taako snorted and reached out to ruffle Angus’s hair. “Well, I’m pretty sure Lup and Barry are too soft-hearted to kill people, so I don’t think your detective skills will be necessary there.”

“I don’t think Kravitz would let them get that far,” Angus said. Kravitz had been keeping a close eye on the whole process, and Angus wasn’t entirely sure how much of it was an excuse to spend more time with Taako and how much of it was him taking his reaper duties very seriously.

Judging by Taako’s grimace, it was at least partially the latter. “Yeah, he probably wouldn’t. Speaking of, where is he? I should be heading out to the lab soon.”

“It’s still ten minutes ‘til noon,” Angus pointed out, though his heart sank a little. Getting bodies for Lup and Barry was very important, but a small part of him was sad that Taako was always so busy and never seemed to be at home, even on the weekends.

“Are you okay with all this?” Taako asked. Angus frowned, but before he could ask what Taako what he meant, he continued, “With me always being gone and stuff?”

“I…” Angus started, feeling slightly guilty at having been caught at his selfish thoughts. Still, asking for help was strength, Angus reminded himself. He quickly grasped for a compromise of some sort. “I do sort of miss spending time with you. But giving Lup and Barry their bodies back is incredibly important!” Angus added quickly. “And I don’t want to slow down that process at all! It’s just...”

“No, it’s fine,” Taako said, glancing downwards for a moment. “Maybe I could take a full day off at some point and hang out with you. Pan knows that Davenport won’t stop bugging me until I do. Would it be okay if Lup and Barry were there too?”

“Yeah!” Angus said, relieved that Taako didn’t seem to think he was too greedy for wanting more of Taako’s time. “They’re very cool!”

“But not more cool than me, right?” Taako asked, raising an eyebrow warningly.

“Of course not, sir,” Angus said in the most sincere voice he could manage.

Taako rolled his eyes, shaking his head slightly. “Come on, Angus. Who’s the one who knows how to make proper rugelach? Who’s the greatest transfiguration wizard of all time? Who once ran a youtube cooking show with over a million subscribers? Because it sure as hell wasn’t either of those two losers.”

Despite knowing that Lup was currently at the IRPE lab, Angus half-expected to hear her offended voice yell back some insults at Taako, describing in detail some of the more ridiculous failures of his life.

The doorbell rang before Angus could come up with a proper reply.

“I already told him he can just teleport in,” Taako grumbled as he stood up to head towards the door. “Save me the trouble of having to get up and get the door every time.”

“Hi, Taako.” Kravitz’s voice came from down the hall, just out of Angus’s sight. The click of the door closing sounded behind him. “Is Angus here?”

“Yeah, you’re going to discuss it already?” Taako asked, surprised but not concerned. 

Angus sat up a little straighter, his attention perked. What did Kravitz want to bring up with him that Taako already knew about?

“Unless you have some objection, I don’t see the point in waiting.”

“Go for it,” Taako said. “He’s definitely been listening in on this whole conversation anyway, and I’m not cruel enough to tell you to keep a secret then leave you alone with the boy detective for hours.”

“At this point, I’m not sure that I’d be physically capable of keeping a secret from him for that long,” Kravitz said, a smile in his voice.

Angus grinned to himself. Kravitz was goofing, but it was also a clear compliment, and Angus knew that such a remark meant even more when it came from a four hundred year old reaper.

“Well there he is,” Taako said, awkwardly waving a hand at Angus as he and Kravitz came into view. Angus hadn’t thought there was anything to worry about before, but there was a certain hesitancy around Taako that made Angus wonder if he should reconsider.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

Kravitz draped his black cloak over the arm of the couch and sat down. It had long, black raven feathers hanging around the neck, which was a recent addition.

“Hey, Angus,” Kravitz said, smiling at him. Kravitz smiled a lot, but this one seemed a little more awkward than usual, like the first time he had met Angus.

“Is something wrong?” Angus asked, frowning slightly. Neither Taako nor Kravitz appeared particularly panicked or worried, but it was clear that something important was up.

“No, not at all,” Kravitz said. “I come to you with an offer.”

“An offer?” Angus asked.

“I’ve sent the official reports of the whole case to the Raven Queen,” Kravitz said. “She officially approved the whole Lup and Barry situation, by the way.”

“That’s great!” Angus said. Despite Kravitz’s assurances that things would most likely be fine with the Raven Queen, it was good to have it confirmed.

“Hell yeah,” Taako said, though judging by the relative calmness of his tone, this wasn’t his first time hearing it.

“Yeah,” Kravitz said, his grin turning more genuine. “But she was also very impressed with all the great detective work you did. The case couldn’t have been solved without you there to spot and put together all the connections and clues.”

“I, uh, appreciate her compliments,” Angus said, his face heating up. It was wonderful that a  _ goddess  _ thought well of his skills, and he was definitely going to hide in his bedroom for like an hour to revel in the mixed embarrassment and pride he was feeling, but he didn’t see what this had to do with anything.

“The Raven Queen sent me to ask you if you would be an official consultant,” Kravitz said, and Angus’s mind turned blank.

“Uh…” he managed, because there was no way the goddess of death could want his help in anything. There was no way Mavis or June would believe him if he told them, and Jimmy would probably assume it was nothing more than a great story Angus was writing. He couldn’t even fully believe it himself because it had to be some sort of prank or test, right? Living people didn’t just serve the Raven Queen like that.

“It wouldn’t involve any field work,” Kravitz said. “Oh, and you won’t have to become undead or a reaper or anything like that either,” he quickly added.

“I would veto the hell out of that,” Taako added.

“It would mostly be me sending you information about certain cases and you telling me what you can about it,” Kravitz said.

“Cases,” Angus echoed, and this wasn’t fair; he was one of the fastest-thinkers he knew, but right now, his thoughts were refusing to coalesce into anything of substance.

“Yeah,” Kravitz said. “Like there’s still all those missing souls that Edward and Lydia took. I haven’t been able to track them yet, but maybe the two of us working together could come up with something. If you want to. I don’t want to push you back into this unless you’re completely ready. And you can refuse any case, so if you don’t want to think about Edward and Lydia anymore, then please don’t convince yourself that you should.”

“I—Yes! I accept,” Angus said, the moment his mind could properly catch up with the impossible opportunity he was being offered. This was not something he could ever allow himself to turn down, even with the niggling fear in the back of his mind that he was going to screw up and get hurt again. Kravitz would pull him out of the case before it got anywhere near that dangerous, and he wouldn’t go rushing into danger like he had last time. “Absolutely! I want to help! When do we start?”

Kravitz laughed. “I can show you some pictures and records I found in Lydia and Edward’s place this afternoon.”

“Thank you!” Angus said. Politeness had been drilled into him enough that the response was almost automatic, even with the numb shock that still filled nearly every corner of his brain. All he knew was that he was going to use this opportunity to make sure that no more people would be taken from their lives any longer than possible.

“One condition though,” Kravitz said. “You absolutely are not to do any sort of investigating unless I’m there, okay? Even if it seems completely harmless.”

“That’s fair,” Angus said. He didn’t love the idea of getting most of his information secondhand, but considering what had happened last time, he could accept it as a necessary precaution.

“I really mean it this time, okay?” Kravitz said, carefully looking Angus in the eye.

He nodded vigorously. “I don’t want to be kidnapped again either.”

“Good,” Kravitz said, leaning back to a more casual position. “But just in case.” He pulled a feather from his suit pocket. “You only have to bend this one in half, so be careful with it. Uh. Taako sort of made me realize the drawbacks of the last version.”

“Thank you, sir!” Angus said, taking the feather. “I’ll try very hard not to have to use it.”

Kravitz nodded approvingly.

“And thank you for letting me keep doing this,” Angus said to Taako.

“Yeah, well.” Taako shrugged. “I’m not happy you got kidnapped, but you did bring my sister and the nerd back. Plus, I’m hardly going to stand in the way to the start of your glorious career.”

“I don’t think I can put consultant to the Raven Queen on my resume,” Angus deadpanned.

“Who said anything about your  _ living _ career?” Taako said. “You’ve gotta think big here, Ango. My afterlife is good ‘cause I’m dating the Grim Reaper, but what about  _ you _ ?”

“Her Majesty seemed quite impressed by Angus,” Kravitz said with a grin. “I’m sure if he wanted to become a reaper after he died, she wouldn’t turn him down. She might even ask him first.”

Talking about what would happen to him after he died should have been morbid and a little worrisome, Angus reflected. While he still did fear death, in a way it no longer seemed like an unknowable end but more like the next stage of his existence, similar in its distance from his current reality to adulthood.

“Then in that case, I firmly expect you to be promoted over Krav in less than a century,” Taako said. “I demand no less from my son.”

Angus giggled at the look Kravitz gave Taako. He wasn’t sure if he would even take up the offer of being reaper, assuming that it would indeed be given, but it was good to know that Taako had adjusted so well. With any luck, being dead would be far enough in Angus’s future that he wouldn’t have to worry about what to do then for some time.

“But in the meantime, I expect you to become more famous on Earth than Taako,” Kravitz said. “Good parents want to see their kids go further than they did, so I’m sure he’ll have no objection.”

“Good thing Angus knows I’m not a good parent,” Taako shot back with just a little too much truth behind it.

“Well, sir,” Angus cut in. “You always say that all of the IPRE plus friends combined makes for about one competent guardian, so I guess I’ll just have to outdo all of you.”

Kravitz and Taako froze, staring at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Fair enough,” Kravitz said.

“ _ Not _ fair enough,” Taako protested. “Angus if you ever upstage me, I _ will  _ hunt you down.” He stared Angus down just long enough to make him wonder if Taako really was joking. Then he broke eye contact and stood up. “But right now, I should get going.”

“Right,” Angus said. With Kravitz’s new case to distract him and Taako’s promise of a day off soon, he felt less despondent than the last time Taako had mentioned leaving, but he was still disappointed that this conversation had to end.

“See you,” Kravitz said, standing up as well and leaning forward to give Taako a peck on the cheek.

“Sooner rather than later, hopefully,” Taako said, grinning at Kravitz. After a moment of the two quietly smiling at each other, he turned back to Angus. “In all seriousness, stay safe, and burn whatever legacy Edward and Lydia still have on Earth to the ground.”

“Absolutely!” Angus grinned. “Though I don’t think fire is the best way to get rid of—”

“Nonsense,” Taako said, grabbing his keys and heading toward the door. “Just get Lup to help out, and you’re covered.”

“Sure...” Angus said. And then Taako was gone.

“So,” Kravitz said, once the door shut closed. “Do you want to start working on the case?”

“Yes!” Angus said, unable to stop himself from jumping off the couch in excitement.

“Our goal is to find the other stolen souls and make sure all traces of Lydia and Edward’s research are gone for good,” Kravitz began. He pulled a file folder from inside his cloak and opened it, revealing a stack of photographs. “These are from the lab the night you were taken...”

...

The case progressed slowly, but Angus found himself absorbed in it all the same. Before he knew it, a week had passed, and Taako was taking his promised day off for a bad-movie marathon.

“I mentioned it at work and because not a single one of those fools have any concept of alone time, they invited themselves along too,” Taako had warned Angus the night before.

But Angus was far from upset at this (rather expected) development. Bad-movie marathons were always more fun when the always-professional Davenport started yelling at the characters, or when Merle made inappropriate jokes that grossed everyone out, or when Magnus and Lucretia made cliched trope bingos and argued over whether or not certain things counted as part of a trope and inevitably got sidetracked into reading funny entries off tvtropes.org.

With Lup and Barry and Kravitz added to this chaotic family, Angus was sure it would be even better than before.

Even with two of the new people still in jars, somehow the living room felt far more crowded than it usually was during a bad-movie marathon. Angus wondered if it was the one body or three voices that made more of the difference.

Nearly everyone was squeezed onto the floor in front of the couch, except for Taako who was perched on the arm of the chair, and Merle who had sprawled out across the couch leaving just enough room for Lup and Barry’s jars at the end.

Magnus had scooped Angus into his lap and now was gently playing with his hair while Taako, Lup, and Davenport argued over which movie to watch first.

Angus closed his eyes briefly and waited for the bickering to resolve. There was a part of him that would never enjoy conflict between people he cared about, no matter how light-hearted it was. At the same time though, there was a familiarity to it that Angus didn’t hate. The petty teasing between the old and new people in his life was one more tie between those two parts, one step further to integrating the two.

“Okay, fine, whatever. I’ll settle for going second,” Taako said at last, dramatically falling across the rest of the armchair, his head on one arm and his legs linked over the other.

“Thank Pan, we can finally start,” Merle muttered.

As the movie began, the group settled into a familiar rhythm that Angus knew well from having seen many bad movies with this group before. Jokes were tossed back and forth, but not with great frequency. Eventually, once they got to know the plot and characters better, more detailed critique and suggestions for improvement would come, but for now, it was relatively quiet.

Angus glanced around the room. Lup, despite being nothing more than an empty-looking jar, was somehow giving off the aura of smugness at having her movie chosen first. Maybe it was the way Taako was sulking in her direction. Next to Angus, Kravitz and Barry had started quietly criticizing the completely improper physics of the opening scenes.

This was  _ his _ doing, Angus realized with a start. Even with the bad stuff like getting kidnapped and almost getting killed, it was all completely worth it to have these nine people crammed into one room, enjoying each other’s company.

Angus had been the one to figure out Kravitz’s secret identity and use that to find Lup and Barry and bring them back.

In the past, Angus had mostly solved small cases, and they weren’t meaningless, but sometimes it was hard to see his detectiving as anything more than a small hobby that mostly only brought joy to himself. But this case had been so much more than that. If solving mysteries could give people back their lives, bring families together, stop people from doing awful things, Angus never wanted to quit.

He was going to do more of this, Angus vowed. He would uncover hidden truths and stop people from being hurt, just like Caleb Cleveland always did. With a burst of startled humor, Angus realized that the case he had solved was as important and dangerous as any in the Caleb Cleveland books. Angus had brought himself to the same level as his fictional hero without even knowing it.

Smiling slightly to himself, Angus turned his attention back to the movie.

_ “Well then what do you want me to do about it? My life is at stake here!” _ the morally-conflicted protagonist demanded on screen.

Taako had slid from his position on the chair to the floor, and now he scooted across the room to squeeze himself in between Kravitz and Magnus. Without taking his eyes off the screen, Kravitz wrapped his arm around Taako’s shoulders, leaning into his side.

_ “Doing good isn’t about what benefits _ you _ ,”  _ the mentor-figure snarled.  _ “Doing good is about bringing happiness to others, even at risk to yourself! Until you learn that there is no place for you here.” _

As the protagonist stormed out of the room, Angus leaned his head on top of Taako’s shoulders. “I guess by that definition, I definitely did good then, didn’t I,” he whispered.

Taako looked over at him, one hand coming up to gently brush his curls to the side. “Yeah, pumpkin. You sure did. And you sure will.”

Magnus wrapped his arms around Angus, squeezing tightly enough for him to feel enveloped without actually bringing him pain. “The most good,” he murmured.

Literally surrounded by the warmth of his family, Angus felt a rush of affection. He knew they wanted to protect him from danger, and it hurt them when they couldn’t, but he also knew they would also always be behind his dreams and ambitions.

With mysteries to solve, people to save, and loved ones to be there every step of the way, the future had never looked brighter.


End file.
